Anniversary in Seaside, Oregon
We are spending this celebration
at a painter's seaside canvas.
Even students on Spring Break
came in from the storm last night.
Soggy hail covered sea grass and beached logs.
Now salty tennis shoes dry in the bathroom.
Sand floods the tub
from socks of our hours walking the beach.
Waves tore at our footprints
as we hunched inside Gore-Tex and pockets.
Later, high schoolers presented "Oklahoma,"
with a small town encore in the school auditorium.
We returned to my mint frosted zucchini cake,
toasted with champagne from our Coleman cooler.
Dark spread the night to waves and breakers,
our lights out to see a horizon of both light and shadow.
Today joggers and walkers appear in our window.
We trade binoculars to invade them after each chapter.
This is our honeymoon beach, the same long boardwalk,
The same restaurant chowder,
The same salt water taffy churning in shop windows
we mailed to our parents.
Then it was youth, desire and Vietnam
spurring us to the altar too soon.
Today it is a beached log, a float rescued,
two unbroken seashells in a tide pool.
by Contributing Poet Mary Ellen Talley Copyright © 2017
VWP 2017 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Sink
We needed
the damage deposit
from the studio
in Port Hueneme
for the next one bedroom
in Seattle
so we could use
your G.I. Bill
and what I earned
at the Navy Exchange
after you didn't die
in Vietnam
we could return
to college
so we cleaned
the olive rug
stove and fridge
woodwork and windows
when the apartment manager
came to inspect
and lifted the sink trap
to find scum
we forgot
but she didn't dock us –
we were so young.
by Contributing Poet Mary Ellen Talley Copyright © 2017
VWP 2017 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
The Things We Carry
I am reading a memoir of the war that incited our marriage.
Inside our lilac scented city, you and I carried desire
like youth's cranking jump rope and I counted revolutions
while wearing those tan oxfords, tennies, or flip flops
we needed to protect our feet from Spokane's hot pavement.
Growing up near one another in a parallel universe,
not friends, but sometimes playing kick-the-can in Healy's spare lot –
I've forgotten the rules that have slid past open doors
of synapses tacked on telephone poles in our hometown.
I sip tea in our married house and open the book of war
someone must've watered down or it would never be
on students' 10th grade reading list. Just now I turn the page
to sense the war that never stole you from me
after you commuted to college with friend, Claudia, war widow next door.
Regretted folly to avoid the draft, you joined the Naval Reserve
but your lottery number was in the three hundreds,
your flag-draped coffin I had imagined would never come to pass.
Claudia's lives in the same house & has since buried her second husband.
Your Eastern diploma scored you typing memos for Seabees near LA
while other grunts with low draft numbers racked up PTSD and addictions
on rugged jungle shrouded mountains. I joined you, & we newlyweds watched
medics calm a GI returnee near our studio apartment – writhing in flashback
for carnage he had seen, buddy who found a mine field with his foot strike.
Today we mail shamrock cookies to your mom, your sister,
our son, our flower girl and my sister whose husband survived duty
as a Medevac pilot in 'Nam but died early, in the end wielding
an oxygen tank, his pulmonary arterioles defoliated from poison Agent Orange.
I spread green frosting for the Irish month of our marriage.
The author tells readers that his text contains fact and fiction. In addition,
everything is truth. Soldiers carried photos, pebbles in the mouth, a hatchet.
One wore his fiancé's nylons wrapped around his neck
and knew they brought luck even after her Dear John letter.
Disheveled vets walk our city. Divorce courts spin romance
on a turn table. No pesticides for our yard, we dig to remove dandelion roots.
Our early union is an anecdote I add in telling teens of social history.
I tell them you're alive and we even drove to Vegas to see Elvis near his prime.
by Contributing Poet Mary Ellen Talley Copyright © 2017
VWP 2017 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
We are spending this celebration
at a painter's seaside canvas.
Even students on Spring Break
came in from the storm last night.
Soggy hail covered sea grass and beached logs.
Now salty tennis shoes dry in the bathroom.
Sand floods the tub
from socks of our hours walking the beach.
Waves tore at our footprints
as we hunched inside Gore-Tex and pockets.
Later, high schoolers presented "Oklahoma,"
with a small town encore in the school auditorium.
We returned to my mint frosted zucchini cake,
toasted with champagne from our Coleman cooler.
Dark spread the night to waves and breakers,
our lights out to see a horizon of both light and shadow.
Today joggers and walkers appear in our window.
We trade binoculars to invade them after each chapter.
This is our honeymoon beach, the same long boardwalk,
The same restaurant chowder,
The same salt water taffy churning in shop windows
we mailed to our parents.
Then it was youth, desire and Vietnam
spurring us to the altar too soon.
Today it is a beached log, a float rescued,
two unbroken seashells in a tide pool.
by Contributing Poet Mary Ellen Talley Copyright © 2017
VWP 2017 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Sink
We needed
the damage deposit
from the studio
in Port Hueneme
for the next one bedroom
in Seattle
so we could use
your G.I. Bill
and what I earned
at the Navy Exchange
after you didn't die
in Vietnam
we could return
to college
so we cleaned
the olive rug
stove and fridge
woodwork and windows
when the apartment manager
came to inspect
and lifted the sink trap
to find scum
we forgot
but she didn't dock us –
we were so young.
by Contributing Poet Mary Ellen Talley Copyright © 2017
VWP 2017 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
The Things We Carry
I am reading a memoir of the war that incited our marriage.
Inside our lilac scented city, you and I carried desire
like youth's cranking jump rope and I counted revolutions
while wearing those tan oxfords, tennies, or flip flops
we needed to protect our feet from Spokane's hot pavement.
Growing up near one another in a parallel universe,
not friends, but sometimes playing kick-the-can in Healy's spare lot –
I've forgotten the rules that have slid past open doors
of synapses tacked on telephone poles in our hometown.
I sip tea in our married house and open the book of war
someone must've watered down or it would never be
on students' 10th grade reading list. Just now I turn the page
to sense the war that never stole you from me
after you commuted to college with friend, Claudia, war widow next door.
Regretted folly to avoid the draft, you joined the Naval Reserve
but your lottery number was in the three hundreds,
your flag-draped coffin I had imagined would never come to pass.
Claudia's lives in the same house & has since buried her second husband.
Your Eastern diploma scored you typing memos for Seabees near LA
while other grunts with low draft numbers racked up PTSD and addictions
on rugged jungle shrouded mountains. I joined you, & we newlyweds watched
medics calm a GI returnee near our studio apartment – writhing in flashback
for carnage he had seen, buddy who found a mine field with his foot strike.
Today we mail shamrock cookies to your mom, your sister,
our son, our flower girl and my sister whose husband survived duty
as a Medevac pilot in 'Nam but died early, in the end wielding
an oxygen tank, his pulmonary arterioles defoliated from poison Agent Orange.
I spread green frosting for the Irish month of our marriage.
The author tells readers that his text contains fact and fiction. In addition,
everything is truth. Soldiers carried photos, pebbles in the mouth, a hatchet.
One wore his fiancé's nylons wrapped around his neck
and knew they brought luck even after her Dear John letter.
Disheveled vets walk our city. Divorce courts spin romance
on a turn table. No pesticides for our yard, we dig to remove dandelion roots.
Our early union is an anecdote I add in telling teens of social history.
I tell them you're alive and we even drove to Vegas to see Elvis near his prime.
by Contributing Poet Mary Ellen Talley Copyright © 2017
VWP 2017 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Bio: Mary Ellen Talley is a Seattle, Washington poet whose poems have most recently been published
in Typoetic.us and Kaleidoscope as well as in recent anthologies, The Doll Collection,
All We Can Hold poems of motherhood and Raising Lilly Ledbetter Women Poets Occupy the Workspace.
Her poetry has received a Pushcart Nomination.
She has worked for many years with words and children as a Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP)
in Washington public schools.
Mary Ellen's husband, Ken, was on active duty in the Navy 1970-1972 at Port Hueneme, CA.
Her brother-in-law served in the Army and flew Medevac helicopters in Vietnam.
Her son-in-law is currently serving in the Navy, stationed at Bangor, Washington.
in Typoetic.us and Kaleidoscope as well as in recent anthologies, The Doll Collection,
All We Can Hold poems of motherhood and Raising Lilly Ledbetter Women Poets Occupy the Workspace.
Her poetry has received a Pushcart Nomination.
She has worked for many years with words and children as a Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP)
in Washington public schools.
Mary Ellen's husband, Ken, was on active duty in the Navy 1970-1972 at Port Hueneme, CA.
Her brother-in-law served in the Army and flew Medevac helicopters in Vietnam.
Her son-in-law is currently serving in the Navy, stationed at Bangor, Washington.
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