Forty Years Ago

I occurs to me that I got home from Vietnam forty years ago today. Indeed, at this very hour.

My major sensation is not so much nostalgia or sadness as much as — forty years! Forty years. My God, I was only twenty at the time I got out of the army, and now it’s twice as many years since! How — How — Where did forty years go …

original art
covers my living room wall
but all I see is
the blank tv screen in which
an old man is reflected
_____

Filed under: John Samuel Tieman, Prose