Today is Veterans Day. The war of my youth was the Vietnam War. This is the war for which I went to prison rather than fight. I note that the verdict is still out on this war. Two million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans were killed. Blanket aerial bombing and burning villages became the norm in this war. Napalm was used to destroy flesh and vegetation. Facts became an uppermost political casualty. Dirty tricks became the modus operandi of a profane president. This was a very dark period in American history. One of the two poems (an excerpt) below remembers Kim as she ran burning from her village (photo). Another remembers the disgrace of President Nixon and his associates.
Poems from Fall Sailing (1972).
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