I wrote this poem for a Vietnam veteran whose job it was to fly his helicopter down to villages in Vietnam, after our bombings, to save as many children as he could. Space limited his work. He painted what he saw…children as logs…when the war ended, his superior officers threw all his paintings into a bonfire. Vietnam limited whatever relationship we could have had.
The Wooden Soldier
The wooden soldier marches
As he was wound to do.
Steadily, rhythmically,
Mechanical precision.
The only dislocation
Between manufactured knees.
The wooden soldier marches
Then stands perfectly still,
A soldier no more
But a wooden peg.
But the soldier I know
Keeps on marching.
He keeps on beating
For he has no key
To stop him from seeing
Dislocated limbs
Of children on children.
He has no key
To stop him from smelling
The river of blood
On Sunday afternoons.
Forgive us, O Soldier
For factorizing keys
Only for soldiers
On wooden knees.
Forgive us, soldier
For mechanized birds,
Wooden logs and battlefields.
frances kakugawa
Golden Spike:Naylor Co., 1973
Reprinted in Dangerous Woman: Poetry for the Ageless
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