2.

On a ship pitching west
across the Pacific, toward tomorrow,
toward Hell, he retched and retched
into his helmet.
Behind him his wife and me and his baby girl;
behind him the house he had just built,
abandoned now to strangers;
behind him his return from
the real war six years before,
the shirt pocket ripped off by shrapnel
washed and folded in the bottom of his kit.

 
 
^^^
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