Bronze Veins
—The Three Soldiers, Viet Nam War Memorial, Washington D.C.
And the stationary eyes, the light-caught
These are what stomach-punch every time. Yes,
of wheel-chaired, gray-ponytailed vets, still
But the statue reminds. The once bell-bottomed
today kneels on a cushion to ease her arthritic knees
She comes every year, notes the saplings
bearing knotted limbs whose wide flowering
only follow the lead of former girls-next-door
angled folds of jungle fatigues, boot laces—tied
in real time by 18-year-old fingers.
the wall impresses with its yards and yards
of names, its dark reflection of the weathered faces
weighting barstools and shrink couches,
tossing through the fearsome nights.
young mother, his child still in her womb
when he died three continents away
as she searches these still faces yet again,
her slim shoulders now hunched below a gray bob.
that spindled through those months
when it was first unveiled, now sturdy trunks
each April shades the two-down-generation visitors
who never knew them—fathers, grandfathers—
now grandmothers, still stunned by those
teen-aged veins in the hand that holds the M16.