ALWAYS

They always lied to our mothers.

Like the times we flew bombing strikes

Over the North and I watched

The foaming streaks of dirty gray missile smoke,

Tinted blue by the glass in my window,

Climb up toward us,

Then arc slowly back down

And stop somewhere in mid-sky,

And I could breathe again

Until the next one started up --

For there was always a next one,

Though they could never reach high enough,

Knowledge that didn't ease my fear.

The press releases that went

To hometown newspapers all across America

Told our mothers that we were in the Sea of Japan,

Some three or four or six hundred miles away,

Not that we hung in the sky holding our breath

In case our faceless enemy got lucky;

Not that we were riding sticks of bombs

Through the skies of Indochina;

Not that the fear made breathing a herculean effort

Because the muscles in our chests

Gripped so tightly that our lungs couldn't fill.

Nor did they tell how it felt in the pits of our stomachs

When the bomb bay doors thumped open

And the plane shuddered and groaned and popped

As it struggled to adjust to the new aerodynamics

And the pitch of the whistling wind climbed

Along my guts and raced my pulse.

Nor did they tell how it felt

As the bombs kicked out, one by one,

And began their silent, deadly fall;

Nor how it felt to watch them unfold

In gray-brown florets below

Like some nightmare yeast blooming

Where roads and buildings had been

Brief moments before;

Nor how it felt

When the aircraft pulled into a tight turn

That lay me on my side,

A twenty-year's child cradled in nylon swaddlings,

The soles of my feet tingling with the need

To feel again the ship's solid deck

And my breath coming in hyperventilate gasps

I strove to hide from my fellows.

They didn't tell how it felt

To watch the earth carom and spin below,

Jarred by the iron feet of jig-dancing bombs.

Nor did they tell of the numbness

Crawling up my stomach and chest

As I watched the silent destruction below

And confirmed it in my clinical logs.

No, they always lied to our mothers

In superlatives that spoke of duty, honor, pride;

Never did they speak of the white-knuckled fear

Which roared so loudly in our ears

That we couldn't not obey.

Nor did they speak of the sweat-soaked dreams

Of fire and flame and crashing planes

And uncried tears for the dying children

That wax and wane in indeterminate period,

Returning, always returning,

As certainly as the waves,

Always.