Poetry, Part Thirty-three

When I was at Marine Officer's Candidate School (OCS), I realized that I didn't want to spend my career living in tents and marching for miles and miles. I resigned and left after the mandatory ten weeks of training (out of twelve). I flew to Maine to stay with a high school friend who had moved there to attend college and live with his brother and his brother's family. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life at that point.

But there were no job prospects for me in Maine, and so I bought a ticket back to Virginia to attend the graduation of those with whom I had trained for those first several weeks. I met up with Lt. Nichols, the platoon commander, and he asked me if I had regretted my decision to leave OCS. I told him I had not but wished that I never came to a time in my life when I would regret my decision to leave.

The following year, when I was still trying to get into the Coast Guard's OTS, I returned to Virginia to stay with a Marine OCS friend and his wife and infant son. We went back to Quantico to walk around the barracks and the obstacle courses and confidence courses. Life always seems to afford me opportunities to think again about my life's choices.

Obviously, a few years later, in Minot, I was again thinking about my earlier choice.

Marine OCS, Quantico, Virginia

I still feel that I am running there.
Not like this thinking war at Minot,
easy to neglect.

Stranger still
locations return me
to admiring us again.

A uniform never losing our youth
when resigning admits we are adults.

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