Vietnam
If you are able
Save for them a place
inside of you
and save one backward glance
when you are leaving
for the places they can no longer go.
Be not ashamed to say you loved them.
Take what they have taught you
with their dying
and keep it with your own.
And in that time when men decide and feel safe
to call the war insane,
take one gentle moment to embrace
those gentle heroes
you left behind.
Major Michael Davis O'Donnell
1 January 1970
Dak To, Vietnam
