From the Bladen County Beautiful Magazine by Blake Proctor
In the late 1990s, I was a director of the National Army Security Agency Association. Since I was consulting in Ohio, the NASAA board asked me to travel to DC to lobby Congress for Veterans’ issues; during those trips, I just could not bring myself to visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial for emotional reasons, as 78 ASA members’ names were chiseled onto that granite wall. On my fourth visit, I finally steeled myself and made an hours-long tour of the Memorial, visiting every one of my compatriots, taking rubbings from each, and leaving my eight-ribbon medal bar in their honor. Gazing at the Memorial before departing, I sat on the knoll, put pen to paper and, with only minor changes, wrote what you read below:
Homecoming
Lightly he touches the stone, tracing a memory.
Across the years comes the face
Of a boy he once knew;
Someone knew him still – a dozen red
Roses crumble in the sun.
He stoops, peers, spies another friend
And turns at the sound of a laugh,
But no one is there.
“Happy Father’s Day – you’re a grandpa now” …
A picture of a woman-child holding a babe.
Memories flood back of other pictures, standard
Black-and-white, of a wife, a girlfriend, a family,
Perhaps even of that child,
Passed proudly around when sickness
For home became nearly fatal.
Decades too late, black granite glistens
In the sun, as their flag
Gently salutes a breeze.
So many of their stories came to rest here
In the town that denied them their glory.
Some may call them murderers, some may
Call them heroes. No matter to him – for he
Will always call them friends.
About Author
