Genesis – 1966 (for my father)
words written in letters
spoken on reel-to-reel tapes
mailed across the Pacific
onto the battlefield
landing with the blazing contrails
of mortar rockets
when I was 9
I wrote
while you fought
making napalm
for flame throwers and tanks
to burn villages
with no hiding places left
all the civilians evacuated
or maybe not
discarded pages
float
across a highway
as I drive to work
was that when
the fire jumped the line
and fell into my hand and mouth
when the impossible
was laid bare to my eyes
during the nightly news
the tanks and helicopters
the children selling cokes
laced with glass shards
pungee sticks and
dead Viet Cong
lying beneath barbed wire
children running down a road
captured forever in the camera’s lens
my car moves forward
scattering
all the pages
filled with words
while students marched
and the government lied
I think you knew the truth
couldn’t stay hidden
and I wrote letters and stories
as the words burned inside me
as the smoke gathered around you
like a fog that removed that place
from that time
pages of words
and the photographs
the 35 mm slides
the film on the nightly news
no way not to see
no way to hide it
no way not to write
the white paper
catches in the breeze
flying
up into the bright morning
Pamela Olson, 3/29/08
“Smoke”
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