MOMENT (POEM)

                                    Moment

1964: South China Sea

It is hours

into the night.

We are in the bowels

of the attack transport

USS Pickaway.

We are marines: young

warriors, powerful, and

think we are stronger yet.

Vietnam is a word

we barely know. Soon, and

forever, Vietnam will be

the only word we know. A gale

slaps the ship about

like a volleyball.

Our bunks are

tubular steel and canvas,

side by side,

six high. There are

two hundred of us

in a compartment the size

of your living room

if you are moderately

well off. The walls are

half inch steel plate

painted battleship gray. The light

is from single bulbs, each

inside a heavy glass globe

inside a steel cage.

This is to protect the light bulb

from the kind of men we are, and from

heavy things which fly across the compartment

when the ship is at sea

on a night like tonight.

The battleship gray walls

and the glass globes in their steel cages

drip beads of sweat

from saltwater showers. The smells are

sweat, saltwater and puke.

We can’t sleep

for being slammed into

one another. The ship

is hammered

by a heavy sea,

shudders,

nose-dives

into the next.

“Je-sus Christ!”  is uttered loudly

by one of the grunts

from Delta Company.

From another bunk comes,

shouted, “Jesus Christ

blows elephants

for a nickel a herd!”

The laughter is chopped

by a silence, as we wonder

whether the power

that’s just been insulted

is the same as that

which threatens the ship.

Then, from a third bunk:

“Hey. Knock that shit off.”

Now another silence, as

each of us signs

a secret document saying

he is afraid of the wind.                                                      ©Dean Metcalf

                                                                                              11/26/2002