The young veteran walks the old streets,
Looking blindly for those he used to meet,
Ten years imprisoned in cursed Vietnam,
While his old friends hold sweet life in their palm,
Ten years lost and only pain gained,
For the time gone he is only shamed.

Wife left after year five,
Believing half-way that her love had surely died,
The old home foreclosed in a state of decay,
Taxes piled up and hundreds of bills to pay,
His identity itself left defiled,
His happy return is his own denial.

The draft pulled him from life,
And the war made him see the grim reaper’s scythe,
Tough times and a sorrowful capture,
He was one of the lucky ones: who avoided an early Rapture,
He knew all he had to is hold on to go home,
Gladdened by the sight of his fellow soldiers roam.

He climbed to the mountains and screamed at the sky,
But then he looked down from the height to spy,
The America his service had saved and thus he saluted the land.