MY FATHER & THE WAR

No one ever asked me
About my father and the war
I heard them call it Vietnam
I saw his shrapnel scar

I watched him smoke his cigarettes
And read his history books
I watched him get pulled back each time
I entered the room

He left from San Francisco
Like my grandfather before
To cross the wild Pacific
To a stranger's foreign shore

"Monday, Monday" played that winter
On the radio
When springtime came in Tay Ninh
It was the bloodiest month of the war

The sky was lit on fire
In that place called Vietnam
And in the screaming jungle
Rolling hell raged on and on

I wished that I had hands to hold
The things he carried back
I wished my love could mend his wounds
And bring the pieces back

He said he wonders who he is
And just how many are there
His white hair grows down past his shoulders
An old man looks back in the mirror

On a summer day, we paddled across
The lake at Root Beer Falls
Sheep's laurel bloomed in Batsto Village
White sand soaked up the red water

The water was a liminal place
A place we could go in between
Cuckoos called from the chestnut oaks
Watersnakes warmed themselves on dry leaves

It took us half the day
To paddle out and back
Nothing else existed
Outside those hours on the raft

Soft clouds looked on from above
Heaven and hell, under just one sun
He need not wonder who he was
And in those moments, he was home

When Aztec soldiers went to war
They took a different name
Should they live, should they return
They would put it down again

He thinks about it often
As if no time has passed him
Some wounds are just too deep to heal
And no one can imagine

When the sky went up in fire
And the palm trees turned to black
When the mortar rounds pounded in his chest
And rolling hell came racing back

He flew back over the wild Pacific
Like my grandfather before
Touching ground in San Francisco
On a stranger's foreign shore

Someone once described war
As a weight that you can't carry back
As a still moment deep in the jungle
When a bear and a tiger cross paths

In a different world than ours
Under a different sun
We'd understand what we asked of them
We'd understand what war is

Soft clouds looked on from above
Heaven and hell, under just one sun
He need not wonder who he was
And in those moments, he was home.