History
Home from summer
classes at college,
my daughter topples
her stack of books
on the tabletop—
Physics, finite math,
American History
from 1860.
Listlessly, she thumbs
the texts, stops
on the chapter
about Viet Nam
and asks me
to quiz her.
We review the French
withdrawal, American
advisors, the reasons
Lyndon Johnson built
up the troops, and names
like Dien Bien Phu,
Operation Arc Light,
Westmoreland and Ho
Chi Minh, the ARVN
and Tet, Khe Sahn.
The fall of Saigon.
Outside the window,
the summer sun
stuns the afternoon
with relentless light,
and my daughter
nods in the central air,
slides a blue plate
of tomatoes
toward me, surrenders
her head to the comfort
of her folded arms
on the tablecloth.
I should tell her
about the tomatoes
at her elbow,
how the salted slices
were my grandmother’s favorite—
how I wrapped the plate
in embroidered dish towels
the afternoon
we returned
from her funeral—
how warm Early Girls
sat on her tongue
in late July
the hour before the telegram
arrived, and how
her supper congealed
on that blue plate
as I watched, in the other
room, the impossible journey
of men returning
from the moon.