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Driving I Remember (poem)

By Larry Kerschner

to note
sites which would be good for an ambush
walking I watch the ground for
dirt which may have been disturbed
in the laying of mines
fifty years later
I still expect the bullet
to hit that spot
just below my left scapula
that always itches
like a target

fifty years later
I remember when we were boy warriors
thrown together far from home

(gun smoke thick as fog
hot brass litter
the lamb-like smell of napalm
burnt indigenous personnel
pile of bodies
slowly moving limbs in rigor
greenthick Vietnamese jungle vines
sticky red clay mud in monsoon season)

if he wasn't part of that
piece of me that couldn't come home
maybe I could
remember my friend's face
fifty years later