Their Struggle Is Your Struggle (Poem)

Their Struggle Is Your Struggle

    for Ben S. Woodruff

Who is touched
      by more than a picture

can tell you blood stains
      dry and brown and flake,

the chest's splatter a slow-drip
      painting filling the camouflage

canvas where you signed
      your name. Over there, in the theatre

of operations for enduring
      freedom, you scrubbed your hands

with dust and sand, held a finger
      to the air to catch the direction

of the fire's flash just as the guy
      ahead mimed he wants to go home.

Later, you got a fleece John Wayne
      blanket for your hospital bed,

reworked your quilt of luck daily,
      chanting the novena to make

your way back and finally out
      of the One Percent club

whose purple-and-gold hearts
      explain blasts' effects better than tears

in Kevlar or a squeeze of the left
      hand now doing its double-duty.

The general who lost
      his son the day the boy mis-

stepped on a land mine wants
      to tell you their struggle

is your struggle but he speaks
      for only one of 5,500 families

while we, back here in America, are the millions
      who never will take a direct hit.

© 2011 Maureen E. Doallas
____________________________________

This poem is prompted by a photo (scroll down to sixth image) on the site of a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Ben S. Woodruff, a young man I know via Twitter who in 2004 joined the United States Army and, as he tells a part of his story here, spent only a month with his unit before deploying to Iraq for the first of two tours, one approximately a year long and the other "a strenuous 15 months". Ben now is working his way through college.

I conflated this poem with several details from a moving story that appeared in the March 2, 2011, edition of The Washington Post, in which Lt. General John F. Kelly, whose son was killed in Afghanistan, spoke of Americans' lack of awareness of the price of our wars overseas.

Note: Technically, Operation Iraqi Freedom ended August 31, 2010, with President Obama's declaration that "the American combat mission in Iraq has ended" (text is here). Effective September 1, 2010, the new name of operations of United States Forces in Iraq is "Operation New Dawn".

* * * * *

I offer this poem for the One Shot Wednesday event at One Stop Poetry, which each week invites poets to share and read each other's work. Be sure to visit the site late Tuesday afternoon and every Wednesday for links to the many contributors' poems.