Portside

Our Hamburger Hill

By Anne Cheilek

Not the high ground but a tempting mount

taken by frontal assault, held for a couple

of avaricious weeks more or less struck

hot off the summer tally, then left

like a delusion in the dark.

Change of management,

from stout hearts to

cool heads, or vice

versa? Too late

we tumbled

to zero

strategic

value, mounting

price. Casualties grew

partners, principles, poor

afterwit wondering why any sap

would bleed so fierce for so trifling a prize.

Lesson learned—maximum pressure scrapped,

protective reaction and troops redeployed home. Except a few

hastily buried words, illusions in arrears, worlds

half-born.

Anne Cheilek is a writer, editor, and musician living in the San Francisco Bay Area.