AWOL

Abstract

I've told many stories about how I became a poet, because only many might begin to approach the truth of the matter. This is another, in part about luck and self-interest, and how various manifestations of the latter during my charmed stint in the Army led to my first significant scribbles. In actuaUty, it's more about a time of great carelessness, an extended moment between wars when I must have believed anything was possible. Either the gods were on my side, or bravado sometimes can make a potion of luck that's stronger than the gods' corrective impulses. Whatever the case, I owe much ofwho I am to those serendipitous years. It's 1968. My wife and I are in our apartment in Kew Gardens, Queens, five miles from Forest HiUs where I grew up. I've returned to famüiarity after a year of living in Spain. We've landed jobs in Manhattan, temporary stops on the way to graduate school where we hope to continue changing our Uves. America is out of control, the government with its war, young people and those not so young with their opposition to it. It's a Saturday morning. I've just picked up a package at the post office that was too big to deliver—marked United States Government. In it is an Honorable Discharge from the army, which I stare at, wondering how this is possible. But there it is, official looking and, in fact, official. It seems comic to me, like a Catch22 entirely in my favor. No less than a year before, I'd planned on fleeing to Canada. I was stiU considering it as an option. In a few months, reading a New York Times front-page article, I wiU understand everything. But now I just srmle, and show the official document to my wife. We hug and cheer in our happy ignorance, the line between successful crime and blessed good fortune more blurry than ever.