Inductees

That morning at the induction center
in San Francisco, all of us freezing,
a reluctant throng of naked draft- age boys,
none of us wanting to be there,
but it was 1968,
John Wayne just out of the box
with the Green Berets,
his Ode to the Viet Nam War,
and the Army medic who
stopped to look at my forearm
with its fresh surgical incisions
heard me say Monteggia’s fracture,
asked about the radial head,
I said:”gone”,
he said:”as are you, sorry son,
we can’t take you with your arm
like that,"
and as I, incredulous, turned to go,
the cornered heifer
now suddenly cut loose,
I knew that every pair of wild eyes
in that dead-silent lineup
was watching me retrieve
my almost abandoned civvies
and wishing they were me.
Outside the fog was lifting
and the summer sun
over the Golden Gate
was its own most brilliant gold..