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I Google my name

08/26/2013 By Ellen Beals Leave a Comment

I Google my name

and come up with yours–the exact reverse.

I think what if we went to school together,

what confusion there’d be at roll call.

Ellen, Wade. Wade, Ellen.

 

But you’re older, a ‘51 baby,

a country boy from Rocky Mount, North

Carolina. And you’re dead,

killed in action in 1972, when the chopper

you’re co-piloting on a rescue mission

is hit by enemy fire and crashes

into a small island on the Dak Poko River.

 

When I think back to 1972

I see a high school sophomore

in a Black Watch plaid skirt getting high

and I am ashamed

I didn’t know enough about the war

that took your life.

 

But when I return to your death date,

April 23, 1972–

was it Easter?

I can picture them stranded, at the water tower,

and imagine they wanted to signal

and you, navigating over

the northwestern edge of the Tanh Canh

base camp in Kontum Province,

wanted to save them.

But the enemy was waiting.

 

That day was without resurrection in Florida too

where I was trying to escape the grief

of my Mother’s death the month earlier,

consoling myself by piercing my ears,

eating peanut M&Ms, sleeping away

on a pull-out bed, and going

to a bar for the first time.

Smokey Robinson played.

 

I’d like to think my grief was for you too.

That somehow I knew, oceans away,

someone I shared something with

died. But to be real, even now

I find you only when looking for myself.

 

I’m still that self-centered sophomore,

just a different self,

and you’re dead now for some thirty years.

Then we were miles apart,

you weren’t

even on my radar. But today I found you

just beyond the periphery,

and I want to wave, want to say

I am sorry and ask your forgiveness.

 

© Ellen Wade Beals, 2004

 

This poem originally appeared on C.J. Laity’s website www.chicagopoetry.com when it took third place in the Freda Stein Fenster Awards. It later appeared on the site Ink and Ashes.

 

 

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: C. J. Laity, ChicagoPoetry.com, Ellen Wade Beals, Frida Stein Fenster, Google, identity, Ink and Ashes, Poetry, publication, Solace, Solace in So Many Words, Un-Googled, Viet Nam, Wade Ellen, Weighed Words

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