By Douglas Rawlings

LEAVING THE INDUCTION CENTER

We were now
all riders
on those olive drab
government buses

trying to make some sense
out of this thing
they called military justice.

Still a bunch
of minors
digging about
in our own little ruins

burrowing through
the dangerous trash
of our own silly illusions.

We were all of us
just drifters
caught up in
a dirty little war

left to ride it out
alone on our own
thin little prayers.

 

Douglas Rawlings was born in Rochester, NY. Drafted out of graduate school at Ohio State in the fall of 1968, sent to Viet Nam in January 1969 as a member of the 7/15th artillery, ending up at a firebase in the central highlands for 13 1/2 months. Returned and finally got a Master of Arts in Teaching English from Boston College, ending up teaching high school in Boston and Maine for six years and then finally teaching/administering programs at the University of Maine at Farmington for 27 years. I retired five years ago. Living in a refurbished 1822 farmhouse in central Maine, I teach a course in Peace Studies at the university each semester. I am a founding member of Veterans For Peace and am presently the president of our Maine Chapter. I have two collections of poetry out — ORION RISING and A G.I. IN AMERICA — and am the editor of a collection of LETTERS TO THE WALL (for the past four years we have delivered four hundred letters to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC each Memorial Day. There are 150 letters in our first edition with another edition coming out).