remember by W. Jude Aher

at seventeen
was i,
so old
so young.
and
it was there
i first met war.

i saw their broken eyes
those that returned
from vietnam,
a (so called) 
american war.

they were the children
i knew,
broken as toys
discarded into
the lost echoes
of a history,
now unwritten
in our schools.

sweet children
lost to their sighs
torn from their tries
or
just names
written on a wall,
a wall of tears. 

at eighteen
i was
willing to die,
but could cry no more.
i was willing
to die
but for love
not for war.

remember!

- jude