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A Thousand Nights at the War Window

By Judith Cody

Kashine hospital helipad

1967

Window rectangles seem to be everywhere
one over my DDT wet horse hair mattress
frames the same scenes night by night
flowing in over the ever-restless seas
snips of roaring warfare, cut bloodied
yells, running bent-in-half men running
like strange brown bunraku
to claim the night's cargo one by one
fresh flown in from Vietnam, broken
more or less some to go home
and...
my eyes clip down against
the lens seeking black
but down...
lands another
jumpy mechanical war-bug over
my bed out the window frame
down...
disgorging its bruised babies
still sweated from battle
into the sanctity of bandaging rooms
under the purity of scalpels.

2018

Yesterday, I looked away from
the soft summer day in 2018, I
looked away for but an instant
and out of the corner of my vision
the bent-in-half medics are
still running, running tending
stretchers strapped
outside the helicopter
there they are now taking the
wounded away on the backs of jeeps
O there is the roar of more
choppers circling not
far above me, waiting patiently
for the tiny airfield in front of
my bedroom window to be cleared for
their landing O there they are now
running in and out of the picture frame
that is the war window at Kashine:
someone left it open in 1967
no one has been able to tug it shut.