The Names Remember

Will de Kypia

               Another DC summer day.

               Ninety-two degrees, and so muggy you

               could almost slice the air with a KA-BAR.

               One suit in the crowd of tourists wearing

               T-shirts and shorts, sandals and sunblock,

               I stare at the Wall. Names I can't forget say

<We don't remember you at all>                  

               Why am I here again, the sweat beading my

               my forehead, soaking my searsucker suit?

               That boy who spent a year in Vietnam is

               not the man staring at this Wall today.

               Why do these names matter to me?

<If you'd died with us you’d still be young>                

               We had a mission to accomplish and

               everyone understood it: Come back.

               Come back alive, and whole, and sane.

               Quit being John Wayne, find your civvies,

               start living this new life you've been issued.

               If you were lucky like me. Thirty-seven

               years ago I strode from an airplane into

               the morning of the first day of my new life.

               I owned nothing but a duffel bag and the

               future. No clue what came next yet I knew

               whatever path I took would be the right one.

               Survival had already justified my life.

               Now the life must justify my survival.

<Mission accomplished?>                       

               I am older than my father was when he died

               and my reflection in the Wall is pear shaped.

               Reviewing my life I find two bitter ex-wives

               and four children seldom seen or spoken to.

               Plus countless professional disappointments,

               fractured friendships, and failed relationships.

               So many bad decisions and foolish choices!

               The life has been a failure, a sorry loser's tale

               told without purpose or meaning or even a plot.

<We woulda done better, way better>         

               I should have died in some stinking rice paddy.

               My name ought to be up there with the others.

<All present or accounted for, Sir>         

                What if I just take myself out? Quit

                the fight, choose darkness not—

                                                   

                          Dinky dow, old man. Crazy talk.

                    People visit this Wall, read our names,

                    wonder what we might have done with

                      the lives we gave. Then they go on

                        wasting their own precious lives.

                   Lives full of dreams and schemes, lists

               of the things they will definitely do someday

                  if they can ever stop regretting yesterday.

                    We remember you, you were there too.

                  But you did not come back in a body bag.

                        You were issued a brand new life,

                         the second chance we never got.

                                Welcome home, pilgrim.

                              We're glad you were lucky.

                    *