Poetry, Part Two

The year I taught at the U.S. Air Force Academy, 1978-9, was their 25th anniversary of existence. Not at the current location, though. They first began operation at Buckley Field in Denver until the new campus was completed near Colorado Springs later in the 1950's.

The English Department decided to do something special with the cadet creative writing publication, ICARUS, to commemorate the anniversary. The cover included four different, previous covers of ICARUS. Inside the issue, volume XIV, from 1979, they allowed me, one of four moderator/editors, to include a poem that I had written about the Academy when I visited the campus for interviews in 1977, while I was still stationed at Minot AFB. I was a bit surprised that they used my poem because it wasn't entirely complimentary, but this was all before my exposure and the subsequent investigation.

The Academy

I remember the trees...
Pines in their natural formation
randomly cover the hills at noon.
We visitors are about the lunch procession:
Cadets marching to a mid-day meal.
We each observe;
and I have my impressions
but hold them in suspense,
matching my integrity with these surroundings.
The steel cathedral rising to the skies
points with the evergreens close behind.
Yet neither competes now with this parade.
I must choose my words as wisely.
True to thoughts and fairly
I see this formation of youth pivot
in a movement that must come to no meaning
in time, with practice.
Men and women emerge,
contrasting even as trees grow to these hills.
All to leave this merging as one mass.
Pushed, at last, to different duties,
and a similar discipline.

I am always nudged by sadness
by such a place as this.
Resentful that I can neither confront nor conform.

I forget how it was for me when I marched.
As they will forget.
As we must remember.

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