the Ohio National Guard

the Lusitania, a passenger ship, was torpedoed by U-20,
a German submarine.
it sank not far from Queenstown, Ireland,
in the spring of 1915,
before Guernica, Spain, was bombed;
before Picasso married Olga,
but after Van Gogh lived briefly in
the south of France with his amazing canvas,
splashing paints, and his injured ear.

in Flanders Fields the flowers bloom.

tombstones there are now growing as tall as fresh spring flowers,
the difference being that the headstones are engraved with names.

i thought about this while walking
my dog on a hard gravel trail
which wanders, deer-like,
through a nearby woods.
it was a hot morning, although not on fire,
when i climbed over fallen logs,
sidestepped the poison ivy,
my legs growing increasingly weary with the
weight of my Army-issue combat boots.

in my head was Dresden, a once beautiful German city, burned to ashes and
jumbled piles of blasted stone
in the spring of 1945,
and very few local people survived the fire storm 
to save their tea pots from the flaming catacombs.

i remembered
the forgotten war 

which was forgotten by the many millions
who didn't fight in Korea.
there were dead bodies on the cold battlefields who are now pieces of thin bone,
small shards of memory, forgotten loves of childhood
lost in the drifting winter snows
on the south bank of the
frozen Chosin Reservoir.

looking ahead,
toward a fenced orchard,
i saw bright ripe sour cherries being harvested by
young men on ladders.
young men, not the present busy ladder men, died
while wearing sweaty uniforms in the oppressive humidity
of the Ia Drang Valley, South Vietnam, in the fall of 1965.
Vietnam is a beautiful country
with a rich history and kind people
who are humble and loyal to their ancestors.
their rice is grown locally.

the helicopters didn't notice the rice as they came in
on their speedy Medivac approach to grab the many body bags 

filled with dead and to aid the wounded.

my dog doesn't know about this:

she cavorts with flickering shadows and chases alert chipmunks,

rabbits, running groundhogs.
she's busy with her own interests and oblivious to
the history of man.
she carries no baggage.

the Ohio National Guard has baggage,
having shot to death unarmed college students
who were protesting senseless killing.