Greenwood

Cycles defined our living, and our dying.

Author photo: Northern I Corps dry season

What can one say of a system

That cites not old,

But cold men

As metrics of success?

Stay a tour

In that fetid place

Where war and rice

Thrived side by side, and

See, hear, feel

What brought the

Asian focus to cycles:

Of wind, weather…and war

As it turned out.

Predictably — yearly —

Monsoons halted

Offensive ops:

Hueys grounded;

Grunts disgruntled;

Armor rusted its

Ton-weight mass idled

By weightless wet.

Rising rain cycled with

Falling counts:

Flights;

Arty;

Contact;

Morale.

Biblical rains’ end recycled

Boots on sodden ground;

Re-loaded tubes;

Rotored sky;

Chart of dry success in

Cold bodies graphing

‘US’ with good,

‘THEM’ to chill and die.

War Recycled on,

Not in the Greenwood*

But in the dry.

*Luke: 23:31