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| Source: Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund |
Because of this I will weep and wail; I will go about barefoot and naked. I will howl like a jackal and moan like an owl. —Micah 1:8
1.
the page of a book
can be a leaf
can be a butterfly wing
a book in a college dormitory
on a Saturday night
with a young man studying
can be a starting line
can be a point of departure
can be a loaded gun
2.
closing a book
on a young man studying
can be a wormhole
to travel across
the United States
to California
to Vietnam
to Cambodia
to death
3.
I closed the book
on a young man
studying.
A bit of light air
grazed my cheek,
pushed me along.
The weight of air
at sea level is 14.7
pounds per square inch,
but what is
the weight of air
with friendship?
4.
How does a young man studying plead?
Like this: Please, guys, I'm in trouble.
I'm gonna flunk out. I need to study.
Please let me do this.
How does a young man ignore his friend's plea?
Like this: Come on, Man. It's Saturday night.
We're going to party. You can study tomorrow.
There's always time.
5.
How do you close a book on a friend who is studying?
Do what I did: Just take the cover and flip it over.
6.
What makes a breeze?
The warm air of friendship rises.
The cold air of ignorance settles.
7.
The breeze moved us through an evening of drinking,
through a day of lounging around until thinking became
exhaustion, became another day of forgetting
until you left us and we forgot about what we did.
8.
pages of a book are many butterfly wings
9.
a chance encounter in a Greyhound bus station
you had the smell
of fear and death
my friend told you not to go
but you were not one to stir a breeze
10.
On May 23rd, 1970, I saw a giant beetle
lying in a Saigon gutter on its back
struggling with its legs to turn over.
That evening I made love to my girl friend
while you were humping the boonies in Cambodia.
11.
I don't know what the breeze told me that night,
but I did know it would always be there at my back.
It whispered in my ear,
remember
butterfly wings are leaves
remember
leaves of a book are butterfly wings
Something happened. I didn't know what it was.
12.
When I learned about your death,
I could not understand one thing:
How could anyone
have expected you
to kill another human?
13.
I wear my military jacket to get in the mood.
I find your name on the Wall.
I place my
right knee
on the ground
I place my
left arm on
my left knee
In my right hand I hold a piece of paper
with a handwritten couplet on it:
Over the distance of 10,000 miles I heard your cry
of how very very much you did not want to die.
I set the paper down at the base of the Wall.
I rested my forehead on my arms. I could not pray.
I wanted to cry, but I was unable to.
Instead, I looked up and stared at my reflection.
I placed two fingers against your name on the Wall.
Behind me, elementary school children on field trips
ran through the grass laughing. They have not yet learned
that the world they see today will not be the same world
tomorrow. A breeze will blow and carry them along.
Today they do not understand, tomorrow they will.
They will feel the breeze and understand the butterfly.
One young boy who hangs back,
frightened
by all the noise,
reminds me of George Fell,
who must have been
the gentlest soldier
who ever lived.
Jimmy Pappas served in South Vietnam during the war as an English instructor with South Vietnamese soldiers in helicopter training. At the same time, George Fell, his friend from college, died in the incursion into Cambodia on May 23, 1970. On that day, commanders announced the death of 190 American soldiers, 500 South Vietnamese soldiers, and 8,000 "enemy troops" in what was described as a "success." One day, several years before that, Jimmy and his friends closed a book on George while he was studying one Saturday night. George flunked out of school, and their paths went in different directions. To this day, George's college friends still love him.
