VIETNAM WAR
Vietnam and Thailand
Tearfall Over The Wall
When Vietnam Veterans are Gone
PTSD
© 2015 by Don Poss
PTSD Poem: Tearfall Over The Wall; When Vietnam Veterans are Gone, © 2015, by Don Poss


Tearfall Over The Wall
When Vietnam Veterans are Gone
PTSD
© 2015, by Don Poss

For the first time, a day had passed and no one read names on the
Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
The second day, no one came at all, nor strummed engraved letters
loved ones once rubbed in etchings.
The third day of solitude, a gusting wind blew Fall leafs tumbling along
Wall's promenade, where oft' thousands had tread daily; that night,
A heavy monsoon rain fell till dawn....

How many tears, like a waterfall, had flowed o'er The Wall in mourning,
love, and regret for those who served and died in the Vietnam War; or
wasted away from Dragon's Orange chill, or
haunting dreams of things that were?

Will someone long hence feel The Wall's healing power, as did we;
Or sense heartfelt pity and grief, or presence of starving
marauding-shadows of the-night with no one left
to consume?

Will a descendant, far-removed, feel a kindred-spirit's link as soft fingertips
ripple over sunken letters of cold granite Names of those who fought, died, or
were left behind; or
even wonder about millions of old Vietnam veterans, once young horn-dogs,
and burdened with treasured memories and desperate moments,
whose ashes now swirl with dancing leafs, or as airborne dust reborn on
towering mountaintop, or does laugh within a glorious sunset?

Will anyone connect grief's-cause with our
Tens of thousands dead,
hundreds of thousands who bled, or
the multitudes who endured a never-ending war; and worst of all,
a nation's taunting unwelcome-home?

Who then will ponder the-whys,
When Vietnam-era veterans are gone; all that's left standing are
The Three Soldiers, and the
Tearfall Over The Wall is forsaken?

(Graphic Art: https://www.vspa.com/poem-don-poss-ptsd-tearfall-over-the-wall-2015.htm)


Inspired by Jackie Kays poem, "The Vietnam War"
(https://www.vspa.com/pdf/poems/poem-jackie-kays-the-vietnam-war-2002.pdf)

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