Wednesday, November 28, 2018

MICHAEL CASEY ~







pentagon



in country the My Lai tragedy

occurred before my time

and the lesser Seymour Hersh story

on Ky Chanh, Quang Tin Province,

was before my time as well

but my patrol route

on Highway One

was through Ky Chanh

and I remember once near Ky Chanh

seeing children play with a stick and ball

with what looked like a pitcher's mound and a home plate

and then there were four bases

now I wish I had stopped

taught them something about the game

but that would mean time travel

you can't get there from now




———————————

Michael Casey
Check Points
Aastra Press, 2011



Michael Casey was born in 1947 in Lowell, Massachusetts. After graduating from Lowell Technological Institute in 1968, Casey was drafted into the US Army and served as a military policeman in Missouri and Vietnam’s Quang Ngai province. His first collection of poetry, Obscenities, was published in 1972 and chosen for the Yale Younger Poets Award. The poems were largely inspired by his time in Vietnam.