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Post by Ivan Carswell on Aug 19, 2007 22:58:20 GMT -5
Dreams Changed To Dry Clothes We once ‘camped’ as you phrased it in a swamp for seven days. The heat haze and humidity were inconsequent compared with where we waded in water to our waists. While warm sweat and complete wetness debilitate the crazed bugs that fed on us were the biggest ache. It still amazes
that dreams changed to dry clothes – the feel of socks drawn sensuously onto powdered feet, the neat lacing of dry boots and the face braced after a clean shave. Seven days of constantly cleaning weapons that rusted away, listening intent to leaves rustling, peering through trees hell bent on seeing them before they came from the gloom.
We could hear the distant boom and shriek of an out-of-view engagement, learned of the way our formation took casualties, prayed we’d be safe. When the choppers came a sense of relief was omnipresent, invading even recalcitrants usually too mired to challenge belief or show fright. But the thought was the same – there would be dry clothes tonight. © I.D. Carswell 2007-02-07
Note: These were recollections from an age long past - written as a gift to someone who remembers...
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Post by Don Schaeffer on Aug 20, 2007 14:18:47 GMT -5
Great poem. Tells it like it was--not that I was there. I lucked out on student deferments and marriage.
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Post by Ivan Carswell on Aug 20, 2007 14:25:28 GMT -5
Good option Don, not that you really had many available, but I'm sure it was a far more productive year than mine. Anyway I cannot complain as I was a volunteer!
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Post by ziggy zagmyer on Aug 20, 2007 15:12:27 GMT -5
your poetry has very strong voice, tightly spoken, great tone. i really enjoyed this as well as the others you posted... look forward to reading more
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Post by Bernard Alain on Aug 20, 2007 21:19:43 GMT -5
very nice Ivan, every post seems to get a bit more impressive, this was wonderfully structured. 'Dreams Changed To Dry Clothes' makes the poem for me. with where we waded water waists While warm sweat wetness, although I agree with the string of aliterations 'with' seemed to stick out, possibly because of the (shortness) of the short vowel sound, just a thought Ivan, I enjoyed the delivery of this very much.
also Ivan, the link to the avatar in your profile is not showing up in our forum, probably due to the fact that it is linked to a blog resource which is not reliable across all networks. We are trying to avoid broken links showing in the forum for esthetic purposes, we would be happy to host this image (for free as always) from our image server, otherwise you will need to switch it to one of the avatars.
thanks again Ivan, hopefully you will appreciate the forum position with respects to presentation, we put a fair amount of effort into it.
Bernie
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