Going Back Poem by Romella Kitchens

I remember Vietnam as a girl.
There were places there where the grass
was very tall.
Somehow, as a girl on a trip there
I got lost from my father.
I walked along a road alone
until a little girl almost exactly my age saw me.
She took me home with her.
Her mother had made sweet scented food.
We sat. We ate at a clean wooden table,
There in a land of rice paddies and brilliant
sunlight.
Beyond race, country, difference we sat.
I think about the friends I made that day when I needed them most quite often.
I think about love.

Time, distance and the years will never change
that.