I started writing a poem about my trip to Vietnam but could not come up with anything true to my feelings. Having grown up in the ’60s, I found visiting the country an emotionally charged experience. Then last week, I recalled a memory from my childhood, which now frames the poem. Like many memories, it is true in substance if not in all the details.

My heart goes out to the soldiers on both sides – those who were killed, those who live with terrible physical or mental scars, and those who returned whole but despised. The Vietnam War was a dark period in our history, both for the war itself and for the way our veterans were treated at home.

My heart also goes out to the wonderful people of this stunning, fascinating country, who went through unfathomable hardship yet exemplify forgiveness, industry, and the human spirit.

At ten I gave the war no thought

Until my father read a note

He’d gotten from a boy, one of

The better students in his class,

Now sent to fight for who knows what.

*

“You never know which bullet has

Your name on it,” the student wrote.

*

 A few weeks on my father told

Me that the boy had died, I’m sure

I cried but can’t remember much

Beyond deciding that I had

To learn why kids were being shot.

*

I started watching Cronkite then,

Immersed myself in  body counts,

Incendiaries, bombing runs,

Hai Phong, Ha Noi, Da Nang, and Hue,

Acronyms like ARVN,

VC, NLF, NVA.

*

WTF?!

*

Fast forward nearly sixty years

And that’s the only letter string

That came to mind on visiting

This stunning, striving, vibrant land

Where VC means not Viet Cong

But venture capital, and we

Who bombed and burned are yet

Received with warmth and open arms.

*

WTF (Why This Forgiveness)?

*

I asked a good half-dozen souls

How this could be; they pointed to

Their Buddhist core, the passing of

Those who had served, the benefits

That tourists bring, it all rings true.

*

Please go, my friends, to Vietnam

And marvel at the splendor, slurp

The pho, savor the coffee, dodge

The scooters, learn the lore and share

The endless, vital energy.

*

Be sure, though, to appreciate

The greatest marvel of them all,

The fact that human beings don’t have

To hate, to cement enemies,

To tar the present with the past.

*

If all of us could act this way,

My father’s student might just feel

His life, like countless others on

Both sides, was given not in vain

But in the cause of ending strife.