Mature before their time

Spending years in numbered beds

Trying to remember who they were

Before getting shot

Wounded

Whatever

Before their dreams got bulldozed

By a cold draft blowing in

Through an inhospitable window

Spending conscience money

That took too many phone calls and letters

To squeeze out of mountains of knee-jerk indifference

Tied up and together by reluctant computer banks

And over-the-top budgets

Waiting for hospitals to heal hearts and minds

On lines too long to count

Spitting up bloody meals

In secret trips to the can

While Mother Nature ticks away their youth

Without a word of genuine concern

Unemployed casualties

Long-walking in parks

Searching for prophesies of better times ahead

And laughing secretly

At the sheer absurdity of war

These are some of their campaigns

Some of the battles fought

Won

And lost

By those who were

Are

And will always be

By someone else’s choice and design

The last remnant of yet another vanishing minority

The other Vet didn’t go to Viet Nam

He went to Canada instead

And forgot for a while

What it means to live in the good old U.S. of A.

He burned his draft card

And learned what it feels like

To say ‘NO’ to Uncle Sam

A part of him wanted to say ‘yes’

But something

Or someone else

Was in control at the time

So he became a dodger

Some of him is a hero

Part of him is a saint

While the rest of him is having second thoughts

Because now

The draftees who went to Viet Nam

Are the saints and heroes

John Christopher

1977