At The Viet Nam Memorial


forty years later, small truths
are quieter than the wall
where I walk, snap pictures,
attempt to capture essence
in macro – history in photograph

my Californian aunt forwarded an attachment – Dresden
as phoenix, Dresden moving death's stone (my mother
says people jumped into the river and the water burned,
my aunt simply says that she was there and saw it)

my truths aren't large – high school classmate,
American citizen, now soldier,
returned to Canada for a brief visit
before again departing, the summer
of nineteen hundred and seventy
on a tobacco farm with a Georgian
who in November joined the US navy

small truths, few names,
little acreage consumed in Arlington