Sentry duty on dark nights

 

Coming home for weekend Liberty
At eighteen seemed intolerable.  El Toro
Was nothing like the getting away
I had planned, months of training for
A short ride home?  It wouldn’t be
Like that in Korea.  I planned
A transfer to the thirty-eighth,

But there were a few I knew
To drink with and not much else
To do even I heard at the front.
I had managed to get a long
Way from home.  I stood in a pouring
Rain at post five on the north-east corner

Beyond a rice paddy filled to over-flowing
When something changed.  I held my
M1 pointed down cloaked myself
In shadow and knew I’d be able
To see it before it saw me.  On dark nights
Still I often enter your room and wait until
I see a sign that you’re still breathing.