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Has the land forgotten us??

Can Viet Nam EVER forget us??





We left no notice we were leaving,

except for our "initials" left on Black Beach.

(Sand has 10-billion grains for remembering,

but "sand" isn't technicaly "land").



I left,  body-first; spirit, never--or not yet.

You left, spirit-first; body, never--I'm back to get

this chill off of my soul, here since you've gone.

The sun is still warm, like you were, holding on.



(Memory, degraded, is memory still, too-real memories.)

Your scent comes to me, scent of Gold sun on ebony hair.

The fossilized remnants of our steps in elephant-grass

are still here, too:  I remember the sun, the air......



I remember this land, I remember.....Minh Goi!

and this land tells me, hauntingly, plaintively,

this land tells me this land has not forgotten.

Nor have I forgotten.  Nor have I forgotten.



If I could forget, would I choose to?

Where can my spirit hide? WHERE!? I've tried!

Always right inside my hiding places, all,

there is terror. Beautiful, but terror there.



Oh, My Hue, where has your spirit fled?

I plead for you!  Urgently, insistently!

But not out of loneliness;

out of incompleteness, now, forever.



The feigned joy when I'm awake

is but my very effective ruse

to escape the awfully real sadness

of endless, sleepless, helpless dreams.



"Post Traumatic Stress", it is NEVER "POST"!

Always in it, in it, in it! No guilty-man remains:

neither tears, nor scars, nor bloods,

for there is no trace left of any outward stains.