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Portrait of a Young Boy At Dawn (poem)

By Marc Levy

The green metal bird shimmies
North along the muddy banks
Sweeps south, flying high, low
A risky business feeling them out
The tall slender reeds bowing
Beneath us.

We bank hard right, dip again
Blowing the green curtain down
The boy equally stunned
His mud laden AK no match

In the forever time
His astonished face, his forever No!
When brrraaapp flips him backward
His starry cartwheel a bloody splash
Dissolved in mud.

In the cool morning air we nose up
Thankfully pull away, his immense
Frightened eyes follow me
Forever wake me at home.

—Marc Levy

Medic walking toward wounded NVA female. Song Be, 1970. Photo by Jeff Motyka.