Pop's Viet Nam Verve Poem by Bill Grace

My Dad was on life's whole a man of few words
But he had something running through his rough veins
That in grade school won a prize for poetic elocution
I found the prize of proof in the toy closet
And was surprised in youth.

We could not discuss Viet Nam as others did
It was reading Bernard Fall that helped me to see
But Dad had a surge of verve on this issue:
'We had no god damn business being there in the first place
And once we were there we didn't know how to get the hell out.'
An old War II vet's concise and poetic summary it seems to me
Of the nasty, fog filled and complicated war
That could well have killed his son.