Just Another War Story.

Ritterbusch, Dale E.

 Just Another War Story
    There's not enough left
   to be placed in a shoebox,
   but we put what remains in a full-sized
   coffin anyway. He tells me this
   after a few too many beers,
   but we both know it is the illusion
   that serves us best, the way we pretend
   everything is other than it is,
   a fable, perhaps, the architecture
   of our minds built on
   unshakeable bedrock--
   foolish metaphors as abundant as stones.
   When he leaped from the Humvee
   at the first metallic thunk,
   small arms fire ripping the brazen sky
   to shreds, he stepped on a chunk
   of concrete blown from a factory wall,
   and his ankle twisted and cracked, spun
   in a balletic move capturing his fall.
   His sergeant said, looking at the skewed foot
   at odd angles to the leg bone, You can't
   have broken it or you'd be screaming in pain,
   and then he twisted it back as if to make it
   right and true to his wisdom: like they say,
   The Army takes care of its own.
   Now he walks with a limp
   since there are more important things to fix,
   fixing not quite so easy as breaking
   though the illusion holds like cement.
   Along a tributary of the Mekong
   his father retraced his steps,
   part way, flushing a bird from its nest,
   but the calm, so reticent before,
   cloaked memory, a heavy mist
   hanging along the Annamese cordillera,
   red dust rising in an afternoon rain.
   Only a few photographs spelled the difference.
   His father stopped at a small Buddhist shrine
   and knelt.
   But his son vowed he'd never go back,
   never limp to the shrine of his friend's
   death: the sound of an RPG hitting
   a stone wall overhead, raining
   a cobbled dust, lingers like a smoke break,
   a taste of cordite always in his lungs,
   a sharp sting in his leg
   if he moves the wrong way. 

A contributing editor to WLA, DALE RITTERBUSCH is the author of two collections of poetry, Lessons Learned and Far From the Temple of Heaven.