From Vietnam Veterans Against the War, http://www.vvaw.org/veteran/article/?id=3664&hilite=
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...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