A Man in Old Fatigues 

                                                ​The New England Center for Homeless Veterans, Court Street, Boston

                        I saw him on the street, a man in old fatigues
                        with switchback eyes that saw where he has been,
                        right left, left right, patrolling in minefields,
                        a hidden, shabby, homeless-seeming man,

                        old soiled news in cigarette-stained hands,
                        a thing held like armor, clutched like a shield,
                        but useless to protect against, withstand
                        invisible straight hits to soldiers' creed:

                        Do not admit that enemy called fear!
                        Get real! Your enemy's between your sights!
                        That's what war requires — what you're here for!
                        Across a gulf I wondered, infantry?
                        Hot jungle fights, in rain, in mud? High nights?
                        Hands twitch, eyes flinch, mind stuttering with war. 


                        by Contributing Poet  Ellin Sarot   Copyright © 2015 
                        VWP 2015     First published in  VietnamWarPoetry.com 

                        Bio:  Ellin Sarot  is a poet and editor in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
                        Her poems have recently appeared in Paterson Literary Review, String Poet, Deronda Review,
                        and the anthologies Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence
                        and Les Femmes Folles: The Women 2013. Recent readings have been in NJ and NY.
                        She was the 2014 Gish Jen Fellow for Emerging Writers at the Writers' Room of Boston.
                        A poem of hers was awarded second prize in String Poet's national contest in 2014. ​