SPECTERS
The specters came again in the night. Why do
they come? Why must they haunt me so?
40 years is almost a lifetime and yet they come.
Many of the specters I recognize, I remember.
Others, I do not remember.
The specters I remember the clearest are those
whose lives I took away in a war in a place
called Vietnam.
Did I kill the others in an impersonal way?
When they come, they still wear their uniforms of
green and tan and with funny thong type shoes.
Some wear jungle style hats; others pith helmets,
some nothing.
One specter still wears the same leering grin he
wore in death just outside my foxhole. Others have
looks of surprise, of hatred, of fear, of
determination. Death masks?
None look happy. They don’t seem to want to do me
harm. Do they just want to haunt me, to drive me mad?
Is this my punishment for ending their lives? Fitting?
Maybe.