Poetry, Part Thirty-five

Nearly a year after I returned home from Marine OCS, in the spring of 1973, some of the guys I went through the program with were now at their advanced training assignments such as 29 Palms, CA, or duty assignments such as Camp Pendleton, CA. I remember one drive to San Diego when I stopped by the main gate at Camp Pendleton and chatted with a couple of them on the phone. They were too busy to get together that day. Dennis Zito, with whom I had become close friends, was stationed at 29 Palms in the desert north of Palm Springs. I drove out one late afternoon, arriving there just after dark at his rented trailer near the base. I took the top down on my 1966 Mustang GT convertible and looked up at the stars since he wasn't home yet. I believe we had dinner at the Officer's Club that night. A few weeks later, he drove to South Gate, CA; and I believe he was with me on that drive to San Diego.

When I returned from Air Force Officer's Training School in mid-December of 1973, Dennis' twin brother, David, was going through back-seater training at Edwards Air Force Base, CA, in the high desert, flying in the F-4. One of my earliest memories was of being left off by one of my parents, probably my mom, at the day care center at Edwards in the early 50's. All these years later, I wore my new Air Force uniform with the 2nd lieutenant's bars to visit David. I was so proud of finally having become a commissioned officer that I wasn't a bit bothered when another guy who was training with him chided me for having worn my uniform for the brief visit.

What I am uncertain about was the trip that inspired the following two poems about Point Loma and the military cemetery there. I certainly did not drive down to San Diego when I was home on leave from OTS in December 1973, before I flew to Minot on January 2, 1974. I also don't recall driving down to San Diego when I returned to Southern California to retrieve my 1973 Chevy Camero so that I could visit friends and family on my weekends off from missile school at Vandenberg AFB in the spring of 1974. And though I flew to Southern California several times on leave while I was stationed at Minot from 1974 until 1978, I would not have had my '73 Camero, now up at Minot, to drive down to San Diego. I would have had to ride with someone else or borrow my mom's car to make the trip.

However, I did drive to California during my first Christmas break at the Academy in 1978. The route I took, accompanied by a cadet, a student of mine whom I dropped off in Tucson, AZ, took us through Albuquerque, NM, and across the southern parts of New Mexico and Arizona. I did stop in San Diego briefly before heading north to stay with my mom in San Pedro where she had moved back in 1973, when I went off to San Antonio, TX. So, while these were two of the final three poems in COMING OF NUCLEAR AGE, I might have written them after that Christmas break in 1978-9, before my Air Force career fell apart.

Back to Point Loma

Few are more eternal than men to represent us.
That granite is here a repetitious sign of death
now that we are so many.
Where each caring seems trying to touch eternal
beyond another birth in flames;
flames too cool to call us yet.
But such is always for the patient
who have endless time for possibilities.
The hardened carvings should have further use,
like pyramids,
past erasing by the latest sun,
now that our stones have lost the arts.


Unlike Summer 1970

The last time I purposely saw Point Loma,
the dead companion,
I knew the atmosphere absent.
Knew I tried to revive my former feelings
but drove away from there much as elsewhere,
having lost another friend.
And losing another obsession.
Returning to parallel as before.
Sensing more than I have written,
perhaps I cannot word anymore.
Probably never that close
to what is always felt with others:
love that is the diversion
until death cuts across.

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