By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall
The Weight of a Rifle
“I had quite forgotten the weight of a rifle.” -C. S. Lewis to his brother, 11 August 1940, upon joining the Home Guard*
By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall
Despite the cold and the morning mist
Some of the fellows reported wild boars
Up against the tree line across the fields
So with my old rifle I took a walk
I found their feral diggings and rootings
And stood and listened to the autumn winds
Sighing in the tree tops, but there were no hogs
Robert Frost could have made something of it
I marched for miles in my merry youth
Laughing and singing by squad and company
M-14 rifles slung over our skinny shoulders
Our government thought this was a good idea
This morning I found some bright-red holly-berries
Which was more fun than shooting at hogs
Or at other men
*Letters of C. S. Lewis, ed. W. H. Lewis, Harvest / HBJ, San Diego, 1966
A Japanese Army Cap
“A fool lies here who tried to hustle the East”
-Kipling
Long, long ago in a land far away
I met some children playing on a river bank
One little boy wore a Japanese Army cap
Faded and old – I wondered who wore it first?
I tried to buy it from him – an MPC dollar?
No.
Five dollars?
No.
Ten dollars?
Laughter and another no.
Twenty good American MPC dollars?
No.
We continued our patrol up to Cambodia
And back again
I did not leave my bones in Viet-Nam
Nor even my cap
(I was a fool all the same)
Toys at the Base of an Oak Tree
“We’ll be Friends Forever, won’t we, Pooh?” asked Piglet.
“Even longer,” Pooh answered.
– A. A. Milne
You find them at the base of a tree sometimes:
A pewter knight or a plastic Robin Hood
Or a marble lost in the long-ago
Turned up among the weeds by shifting roots
In the leafy silences of summer a little boy
Practiced the arts of magic and manliness
With Robin Hood and the pewter knight searching for a jewel
To present to their Lady Marian
When he was a little older the boy walked to town
To the bus station, and off to a distant war
A jewel sacrificed to the blasphemy of the State
You’ll find his name at the base of a stone
But the pewter knight and the plastic Robin Hood
And beautiful Lady Marian still wait for him
A Carrier of Bodies
“My stretcher is one scarlet stain” -Robert W. Service, “The Stretcher Bearer”
In illo tempore:
I don’t know that anyone shouted, “Corpsman up!”
Like in the movies; I was already up
There, where smoking metal scraps stopped in some kid’s flesh
Red fragments of flesh screaming in the sun
Later:
Carrying bodies of literature was impossible
But I tried; Wordsworth and Keats during the day
Holes in the patients and in sterile drapes
Red fragments of flesh in the E. R. at night
Now:
In the evenings I carry Wordsworth outside
And my older self, to a chair at dusk
An Old G.I. Belt Buckle
For Storekeeper Third Class Thomas of Knoxville, Tennessee
“What he believed, he did.” -Laurence Binyon, “In Memory of George Calderon”
An old belt buckle in the back of a shelf
Greening brass on a belt now much too short
Maybe the same one I wore on the Vam Co Tay
Scattered thoughts shift to Thomas; I don’t know why
A good man with a clipboard and a fifty-cal
Sitting on the edge of a bunk feeding a child
Spooning c-rats and making the kid laugh
“One for meeee…and one for youuuu!”
I wonder whatever happened to good ‘ol Thomas
I wonder whatever happened to the child
I wonder whatever happened to all of us
LogoSophia Magazine 
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