How quickly the tears come
is a tribute to their valor and to Maya Lin
and the perfection of her vision.

I perform an experiment
for my students back in San Antonio.
Standing before each panel
near the casualty-rich center
I count the seconds
until my eyes find a name
that tells of Indian-Spanish heritage:

 A thousand and one--Flores
 A thousand and two--Gonzalez
 A thousand and three--Zuniga
 A thousand and one--Flores

It is a bad day for flowers
and I cannot exceed three seconds.

  The air cavalry burns another village to save it as
  the choppers clip the morning air over the scent of
  jellied gasoline and the sound of crying children
  the fresh troops fly in and the body bags fly out.

   After they pulled down the tipi
   an Arapaho elder
   raised a trade goods hatchet-pipe
   and the young officer who rode him down
   turned to finish the old man
   and was almost thrown for
   not knowing that a horse
   will try not to step on a human being
   or not knowing that the elder
   struggling to rise on his unbroken arm
   was a human being.

Across the grass there is a new monument to the women.
One nurse holds a pressure bandage
on the chest of a fallen warrior
with the heel of her hand
another gazes skyward
for Med Evac.

  The smell of powder and the haze it creates and the
  constant din-din-din of automatic weapons fire
  takes all the senses out of the world but for a
  wild shout that cuts through all the overloaded
  neural pathways and connects to the here and now:
  "Medic!  We need a medic!"  Women were not supposed
  to be battlefield medics, but they forgot to tell
  the battlefield.

   The young officer ended the encounter
   with a pistol shot to the head
   close enough to spatter
   the blue coat red.
   He had another for the elderly woman
   uulating over the body.

The statue raised to placate
those who did not share Maya Lin's vision
is not as dreary as I expected.
Three young warriors, bone-tired,
seem to be regarding
the names of their fallen comrades.
I stand beside them, crying.

Steve Russell
©1999