Memoirs In Verse

Listen to:  The Monsoon Break On An Oil Field Our ship’s alone—for many weeks we’ve toiled,  Nurturing those rigs and platforms like flowers, Their roots searching within the Earth for oil, Reaching for that dark ichor of ancient life.   Throughout the days of May, the monsoon gathered,  And compelled Fair Weather to yield her claim, And leave us among the lonely platforms, clustered,    As a flock around their shepherd, watchful but alone. Stiffening breezes proclaimed the summer’s tumult,  And the cumulus obeyed the season’s call to fly   Eastward to the warm monsoon’s embrace, beneath the blue-mantled ocean’s sky. Now, helicopters drone on their final flights like bees,  That dip among the blooms shimmering in the heat, The rhythm of their wings beating in the breeze, To carry home their drowsy weight, replete. A host of nimbus crowds the darkening skies, And rain spills from that brooding refuge In silvered cascades—for millions the joyful reprise  Of each summer’s gift, that life-

Listen to: Medevac This poem is about a medevac operation by two pilots on an oil field west of Mumbai (Bombay). Flying conditions were appalling. The American pilots remained true to their word when they declared many weeks earlier that if we needed them, they would come. The pilots were ex-Vietnam veterans and had flown gunship and medevac operations there. The pilot’s voice crackles, ‘Papa Charlie, this is Kilo Lima,’ the ship’s hove to, plunging and heaving in the writhing swell, ‘ETA your helo-deck, zero three minutes—Are we clear? Over.’ I glance at the lacerated diver, the bastard’s going through hell; at last, the chopper beats towards us in the hot and humid air. ‘Roger, Kilo Lima, deck’s clear. We’ve got a damned heavy sea.’ Now I can hear the percussive drumming of the huey's rotors, ‘Copy that, Papa Charlie—it’s like goin’ into a hot LZ!’ My crew stand ready by the deck as the bird approaches, and the chopper beats above us in the hot and humid air. The wind, salt and r