Time Traveler
Time Traveler:
for my dad, a veteran
You sent letters
stamped US Air Mail 10 cents
postmarked Fort Dix, February 1, 1968
Red Banks, August 20, 1968
Anchorage, December 1968
Tokyo, December 22, 1968
Or no postmark at all
Just a hand-written FREE
Where a stamp should be
A gold-trimmed, pink-flowered, store-bought Mother’s Day card --
grandest one they had at the PX --
a rhyming poem inside,
scripty font looked prettier than the words sounded,
but it didn’t matter
because no words could ever bespeak your heart
Momma’s heart lived an unspoken, never-talked-about-aloud fear
outside of her body on the other side of the world;
You were in towns she’d never heard of,
so the card came to assuage the worry.
And you wrote
From Nha Trang
The VC apparently lobbed a few mortar rounds about 20 miles from here
Don’t worry about it, Mom.
If I heard that there had been a fire in a home in Buffalo,
I wouldn’t be worried that it was ours.
Thoughtful expressions of gratitude from son to mother
As you attempted to reconcile the wrestling matches of machismo ego:
Are you a man because you can aim and fire a rifle,
Or because you realize the true victory lies in not having to pull the trigger at all?
Thank God you raised me the way you did.
You planned for the future.
Your barely-older-than-adolescent heart beats steadily with the pulse of promise,
Your face lifted to catch the sun of a warmer horizon and looked to the girl back home:
Take care of her for me, Mom.
I’m going to marry her
Make a life when I get back.
Pray for me Mom; pray with me.
And her mothermind knelt stateside, palms pressed hard together.
Boots on home soil; a wedding March 1970
And then off again - Europe-bound this time
A little more civil than the frontlines.
June 1970
And postcards began to wear a feminine penmanship
Army and Air Force Postal SVS APO August 1970
Munchen September 1970
Amsterdam December 1970
Brussels December 1970
We’ll see you soon.
Decades stretch out behind you now,
A long road generously paved with memories and answered prayers.
You wear your faded-to-nearly-gray ball cap
Punctuated by yellow embroidery
VIETNAM VETERAN
Strangers shake your hand at the market:
Thank you for your service
Grandkids and neighbors seek you out
For their annual interviews each November:
Veterans Day.
You gladly recite:
Rank and job
Locations of service
Branch of service
Years of service
And then they always ask,
Do you have any stories you want to share?
And you hesitate.
A few hardly noticed seconds of silence.
What visions appear behind your eyes?
What ghosts haunt the back of your heart?
Then the corners of your eyes turn up in a smile you’ve spent all those decades perfecting
And those eager faces are glued to your voice:
I shipped out from Vietnam at 1pm
And arrived in Seattle at 11am --
Two whole hours before I even left
You know I was a veteran,
but I bet you didn’t know I was a time-traveler.
