Ride to Freedom

By Steven Croft

Word comes into the tent at night, soldiers sit
on bare mattress bunks, under fluorescent lights,
packed duffels lining the aisles: we have a flight
out of Taji.

Eagerly carrying more than our weight on our backs,
slung in our hands, we file through the tent flap,
our final moon dust tracks to an air-conditioned
bus. As the Iraqi night blows its round the clock sand
through our boarding lines, we board for the tarmac.

Talk of home low, psychotropic, I pull back the window
curtain to see the moon lighting the T-55 tank
graveyard, and a mortar flash beyond the distant wall
lined with guard towers puts me back in the seat
of a Humvee racing to its radar acquired point of
origin, machine gunner firing warning shots ahead
of intersections, hot casings falling from his gun,
bouncing from my helmet and body armor.

But it’s the Bee Gees who hover over everything,
on Armed Forces Radio, who call me back to the bus
that is going home, coming through the bus’s speakers
now, ready to lift the burden of remembering like
a team of compassionate doctors there to tell you
the cancer is gone.

****

An Army veteran of Iraq (2005-2006) and Afghanistan (2009-2010), Steven Croft lives on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia where he works for a public library. He has recent work in Willawaw Journal, Sky Island Journal, So It Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, Third Wednesday, Red Eft Review, San Pedro River Review, Poets Reading the News, Gyroscope Review, and other places.