PRISONER OF WAR

We were unable to help you
flesh torn barbed wire
scraping red your bare skin
like a lover's fingernails digging in
drawing you closer to her.
I, we, saw you running, muscles pumping.
Your heart filled our eyes with tears
both for your last burst to freedom and for fear.
Fear of dog tracks in your footsteps
as they clamped your throat and drank
your breath into their hot lungs.
Ripped bone white you hung
in your new found freedom
and as the guards pulled you
from your steel sanctuary,
two blood stained barbs caught your cheeks
and pulled a smile across your face.

VIETNAM WAR MEMORIAL

Tonight I found something
I thought I had lost;
along the Black Wall
my fingers felt the souls of time,
passed over strangers, old friends,
fifteen years of unnecessary bloodshed,
checked through forty or fifty names
in the Book of The Black Wall,
holding back the tears, lest
I should find one name I knew
having known them before adolescence.
I could not visualize them maimed
or missing in action or dead.
I could not see them clothed in khaki,
gun in hand, forgetting
the one thing they and I had lost,
our childhood.

Wayne Ray