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The Medevac (poem)By rg cantalupo...and so we rose, finally, nose dipping into the rotor's whirling current, then rising a hundred feet or so above the firefight—
the AK's crack-crack-crack and the rocket- grenades' explosions fading to lesser sounds— the men in their shallow foxholes below
receding—no longer mine—and my body's closer perimeter returning, head throbbing, blood drying on my palms; rose until
the rush of terror died, and I returned, and with me, the boy lying beside me, his ragged breath, his eyes glazed over with shock
as the medic worked on his wounds; rose, slowly, wobbly, an O so burdened bird, too heavy, too full, our thin underbelly
exposed, and the riffs of bullets sparking round us; rose, and then, fell, pilot slumped over, blades swooshing through dead air,
the green rice sprouting up to meet us and the grey-green faces bursting from the bush with flames shooting out their mouths; rose,
and then fell, fell as if in a falling dream, as if that's all there was and all there ever could be; and so I got ready, I searched
the medevac's belly for a weapon—an M-16, a machinegun, a bayonet, anything to kill with if I survived—no time now for prayers,
no time for the still eyes beside me—falling, falling—until, suddenly, thirty feet or so above the ground, a hand caught and hurled us
skyward again, the co-pilot hard at the controls and we ascending, the hospital twenty clicks through stars and home somewhere beyond... —rg cantalupo
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