a souvenir of 1969

Tu Do Street
hot and dry and teeming with bikes
and anxious smiles
far from the unwashed feet of black sandals
carrying just-baked white loaves of
warm bread along
with a small bottle of fish sauce
tucked into a secret universe,
a baby bag of white rice,
and a can of coke-a-cola expertly flattened into red,
white, and aluminum thinness
to become a wall or a roof
or a souvenir
from a time when Catholics
and Buddhists,
and Atheists and Christians and
young boys and girls,
old women with black teeth,
and old men with thin arms,
sank together into the mud of a dried river bed
looking for bones and shells,
but finding a naked sword
to hold up high.