​​Three Men

         A sculpture at the War Memorial Plaza,
         Vietnam Veteran’s Park
         —Nashville, TN
  
All three of them in top brass uniforms,
green on gold. Dog tags over their hearts.
Two kneeling, looking for the enemy,
 
the other, with his afro tucked under his helmet,
stares right at me, grenade launcher ready--
his look cutting through
 
time, asking me something, something
I cannot see through the fog
in my eyes.
 
One with a map folded in his hand,
an M16 rifle stock under his armpit;
green muscles, veins in metal flesh;
 
clenches a field phone. He’s giving
coordinates or asking for help. Some say
radio waves travel forever.
 
A hint of their plea still races
through the universe,
not buried in the silent earth.
 
These young men, crouched
below the brush, kneel in prayer, too.
One with his finger on the trigger.
 
His helmet isn’t there. Perhaps fallen.
His wavy blond hair curls
around beads of sweat.
 
There’s a wet sheen on all their faces,
maybe because the American sun
is shining through the trees.
 
These boys forged into men.
 
Their mettle should never tarnish,
their courage cast in bronze
will never rust.
 
I almost see the glassy images in their eyes
—their wives back home, kids in cradles,
young brothers, sisters; moms & dads--
 
with that far-away look that I still have
stretching across the Tennessee,
across the long strong mountains.
 
A sparrow watches too.
 
 
by Contributing Poet  John C. Mannone   Copyright © 2020 
VWP 2020  First published in  VietnamWarPoetry.com     
[2nd place winner (together with two other poems) of the 2014 Knoxville Writers’ Guild Writing Contest]

Bio:  John C. Mannone  has poems accepted in North Dakota Quarterly, the 2020 Antarctic Poetry Exhibition, Foreign Literary Review, The Menteur, Blue Fifth Review, Poetry South, Baltimore Review, and others. He won the Impressions of Appalachia Creative Arts Contest in poetry (2020) and the Carol Oen Memorial Fiction Prize (2020). He also won the Joy Margrave Award for creative nonfiction (2015 and 2017). He was awarded a Jean Ritchie Fellowship (2017) in Appalachian literature and served as celebrity judge for the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (2018). His latest collection, Flux Lines: The Intersection of Science, Love, and Poetry, is forthcoming from Linnet’s Wings Press (2021). He edits poetry for Abyss & Apex and other journals. A retired professor of physics, John lives between Knoxville and Chattanooga, Tennessee. 
​http://jcmannone.wordpress.com ​