The Leviathan

by James Brasfield

First summer after the lottery
numbers were assigned,
and each day the country was
closer to what was called
Peace with Honor — at its end
nearly 60,000 soldiers lost —
I was a lifeguard at the inner–city pool,
and off from my tall chair
saved, from what I remember,
a little girl just in over her head
and a man on the grate
at the bottom of the deep end.

Fifty years and twelve–hundred miles
from the pool, I see my town’s bay
from my window and someone
walking down the sidewalk
on the other side of the street
(on its berm a line of trees),
someone who doesn’t live
along this street, pass behind a tree,
appear, then pass behind another
and on until mid–block, and disappear . . .

I was issued a number
too high for conscription. —

Six years later, Saigon fell.