Remembering MCC Vietnam

For Pat

​

Remember how you placed your lips
upon her lips to blow the soul
back into her pulseless little frame?
But the random bullet took its toll.
Or when your gentle fingers closed
the eyelids of the mountain man
who'd been choppered down from hillside home
and left to die amidst his broken clan?
On other nights you'd press your lips
to mine in passion full ablaze,
Your pulsing fingers touched me 
and mine too danced in a craze.
Sometimes the heart declares belief
that hope will trump the deepest grief.

 

 

Perviously published in The Mennonite. Used with permission.