NVN Friday: TROMPE-L’OEIL

by Suzanne Morris

*

Whenever I look at the
portrait of him 50 years ago

peering out from beneath
the smart billed cap

of his U.S. Army
dress uniform,

his eyes seem fixed on
grim reality:

he was drafted just before
his 25th birthday

during a war that he
already suspected

we should not be fighting,

and the casualties were
mounting at an alarming rate.

What a relief when he was made
a levee clerk in the Medical Corps,

posted at Fort Lewis, Washington.

Yet... sending others into action
while remaining safely behind

left its own set of scars.

Long after the war was over,
he suffered nightmares

of being under fire in Viet Nam.

I would lay beside him in the dark,
transfixed as he described

in terrifying detail

the first-hand experience of
a combat veteran.

This year I watched the
Memorial Day Concert on PBS,

with patriotic music and
stories of valor—

a resounding tribute to all who had died

defending American ideals
over the last 250 years.

By the time the show closed
with a haunting rendition of Taps

I was clutching his picture
against my heart,

knowing how grim
his face would be

had he lived long enough to see
the abdication of  those ideals

by a President afflicted with
gilded bone spurs,

and thinking ahead to the
taxpayer-financed military parade

scheduled in Washington, D.C.
on June 14th,

a faux tribute to the U.S. Army that is

sure to make Trump’s pal Vladimir
red-faced with envy.

Anyone who dares to crash Trump’s
45-million-dollar birthday party

will be met with great force

as in the case of the protests
against his immigration raids in L.A.,

drafting U.S. troops
to engage in a war

they should not be fighting.

*

Suzanne Morris is a novelist with eight published works, and a poet. Her poems have appeared in online journals including The New Verse News and Texas Poetry Assignment, and anthologies including The Senior Class - 100 Poets on Aging (Lamar University Literary Press, 2024). A native Houstonian, she has resided in Cherokee County, Texas, since 2008.