Poems and Memories
Welcome to my poems and memories. At the time, these are under construction... thanks for checking...these words are distrubing as are my memories.. they are with me for a lifetime... for you, this is a peek into the memories, through poetry, of a woman who was a triage nurse at the 67th Evacuation Hospital in Vietnam...
THE HAUNTING SOLDIERS
Somewhere inside me
behind a wall
the soldiers hide.
One lies motionless on a litter.
A torso, head and one mangled arm remain.
Dwarfed by
bags of blood
bottles of fluids
the black Ambu bag
and miles of tubes.
We scatter around him
and slip in an ocean
of his blood.
We push him into the O.R.
He could live.
I wonder how.
The next screams constantly.
This is all too much for him to bear.
He waits for the O.R.
tied to the litter
screaming for me to end his life.
Calmly I say,
"I can't do that. You'll be all right."
Inside, I am amazed
that I could.
The last is hardly wounded.
He waits while more severely wounded
are attended.
He begs for a cigarette.
We grant him his wish but
inside is worse than outside.
I bag his body,
his intact flesh mocking me.
You didn't know. You didn't see.
The wall hides them.
It only slides a bit,
entombing my history
and leaving me here
in this present
alone.
COPR Norma J. Griffiths 12/5/92