11 Bravo Invocation

by Gary McGinnis

please save us from mayhem
and escort us still living
through harsh green thickets
of sprawling lime jungles
where life walks on brave legs
oh please none be mangled
be lost or be torn
where faces fly by us
in the nights of our thinking
as we sleep under stars
mosquitos to share
and then there’s the whisper
we hear it like humming
but the others find rest
within four wooden walls
let us wade through this time
with only brief sorrow
may our minds remain strong
and think nothing of sinking
so low in the distance
so low as our graves

My name is Gary McGinnis, I wrote the poem intentionally without caps and punctuation, except for the title, 11 Bravo Invocation. The poem came to me while I was writing a novel, which is still in progress. The poem came out of prose as I described a trip in the back of a deuce-in-a-half from Long Bien to Bearcat December 1967. I wrote the poem around ’94. I served Dec ’67 thru Dec ’68 in the Mekong Delta with the 15th Engineers of the 9th Iinfantry Div. I was a water purification specialist attached to small base camps. Iwrote the poem in Las Cruces, New Mexico.