Doing Time

Midnight. The whomp of a police 'copter.
I drift up from a dream, sink back,
ask the Dream Man if there's a support group
for Vietnam wives, marriages dead,
not their husbands.

But you appear, wearing dress whites
from our Pearl Harbor wedding,
wife in red satin on your arm.
I forget the Dream Man, slink away,
Birkenstocks slapping the pavement
in my haste.

I thought you were lucky in your
supply ship assignment.
No jungle
No upriver
No Napalm
Shelled once, your letter screamed
'They were trying to kill me. They were
trying to kill me!'

I never saw the war in your edginess after
or in the wall you erected between us.

I was too young then to know that it takes
only one knife at the throat, one car wreck,
one rape to change a life and the wall
you built was your prison, not mine.
You were the one doing time.




Pris Campbell
©2011


Published in The Rusty Truck  May 2011

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