Poetry | September 01, 1997
After the Fires We Once Called Vietnam
Walt McDonald
Here on these flat fields I remember napalm,
that lavish charcoal lighter of a fat man’s barbecue.
I’m like a pitcher with eyes in the back of his head
who wore his ball cap backward, ignoring the signs
his catcher gave, the finger between his thighs.
Often, he saw the runner leading too far off and whirled
and picked him off. Amazing, how hindsight made him hard
to steal on. He scrolled mistakes in his mind
like a three-inch roll of tape, adding them up,
the total always the same, like calling for a fly ball
in the infield, my fault, mine. Saigon was lost
before I got there, fortunes stashed in Swiss banks,
French plantation rubber and raw silk. I flew off to war
and came back home alone. These are the facts.
I have a fence to mend, cattle to keep, or give up all
we’ve worked for. My wife depends on my saddle, ten miles
from any mesa, from any town, ten thousand miles
from jungles that once burned. Those villages were theirs,
and these flat pastures mine, a flat field not on fire
but shimmering in the sun, my herd of Angus burned
as black as toast in the sun that heats the wind,
that turns the windmill, that pumps cold water to the troughs
and faucet I bow to, splashing my face to cool my neck
until I’m sober. I know this patient appaloosa is my horse,
those barbed wires sagging a mile away are mine,
and only I can twist and tighten them to save these steers
needing alfalfa and water from a well, not a lake
less tangible than guilt, a shimmer, a trick my eyes ignore
while I ride there on a trotting horse. The sun will blaze
tomorrow like most days on the plains, a mirage
fat Angus wade before the slaughterhouse. But now,
dismounting at the wires, when I glance back, it’s gone.
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