freckle-faced
jug-eared
left-handed
skinny as a fungo bat
loose-jointed
like a string-puppet
in sports
not great but
scrappy and fun
long distance runner
played hard
no grudges
nobody's idea of handsome
voice like a scratchy record
married straight out of high school
drafted
101st Airborne
everybody had a dumb nickname
Denny, Little Old Lady
nobody remembers why
Thua Thien, South Vietnam
hit by an RPG
August 5, 1968
smithereens in a body bag
days later, a letter
informs
he's a daddy
Denny, if you'd lived sixteen more days
you could've legally bought beer
I'm sixty-seven years old
you're forever
almost twenty-one
Memorial Day 2015
We've lost them by the thousands.
We grieve them one by one.
