Fred Marchant

Tipping Point

Late blue light, the East
China Sea, a half-mile out…
masked out, snorkeled, finned,

rising for air, longing for it,
and in love with the green
knife-edged hillsides, the thick

aromatic forests, and not ready
for the line of B-52s coming in
low on the horizon, three airplanes

at a time, bomb-empty after
the all-day run to Vietnam
Long, shuddering wings, and predatory,

dorsal tail fins, underbelly
in white camouflage, the rest
jungle-green, saural, as if a gecko had

grown wings, a tail fin, and
nightmare proportions. Chest deep,
on the reef-edge, I think of the war smell

Which makes it back here:
damp red clay, cordite, and fear-salts
woven into the fabric of everything not

metal: tarps, webbed belts,
and especially jungle "utes,"
the utilities, the fatigue blouses

and trousers which were not
supposed to rip, but breathe,
and breathe they do-not so much

of death-but rather the long
living with it, sleeping in it,
not ever washing your body free of it.



A corporal asked me if he still stank.
I told him no and he said,
"with all due respect, Lieutenant,

I don't believe you." A sea snake,
habu, slips among the corals,
and I hover while it slowly passes.

My blue surf mat wraps its rope
around me, tugs inland
at my hips while I drift over ranges

of thick, branching elkhorn,
over lilac-pale anemones,
over the crown-of-thorns starfish,

and urchins spinier than naval
mines, over mottled slugs,
half-buried clams, iridescent angelfish.

The commanding general said,
"Every man has a tipping point,
a place where his principles give way."

I told him I did not belong
to any nation on earth, but
a chill shift of wind, its hint of squall

beyond the mountain tells me
no matter what I said or how,
it will be a long swim back,
complicities in tow.