Danang 1967
The dresses they wore,
long silk affairs
in residential streets
shaded by trees.
As if snatched from sky
to earth, blues and greens
yellows and golds,
silken rainbows
with backdrops of white
where in daylight and dusk
you wouldn’t know war’s
destruction, war’s ashes.
The long dresses of girls
and women in doorways
of houses, shops.
Silken rainbows on the path
along the river.
I took her hand
as she stepped from the barge.
Her dress of orange rose
with the wind to reveal
a backdrop of snow
in this city where
snow never fell.
Peter Mladinic’s most recent book of poems, Maiden Rock, is available from UnCollected Press. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, United States.
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