Ralph S. Carlson

Ralph S. Carlson, Emeritus Professor of English at Azusa Pacific University, was trained in Hanoi Dialect Vietnamese at the Presidio of Monterey, October 1968-April 1970. Following Security School at Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas, he served a year in Viet Nam both as an 04B Translator-Interpreter, and as 98G Voice Intercept Operator with the rank of Specialist 5th Class, returning stateside in October 1971. His poetry has been published a lot!

The Rescue

Hey, Sloan said, / there’s a Cobra down in the river. / He ducked into the bunker for binoculars. / I squinted across the valley at the Ba Long. / Olive motion on jungle green, / a gunship wheeled, / hung nodding at a point on the far ridgeline, / circled to clear profile above the horizon, / then dropped toward a blob in the river.

Dream and Implications

Sometimes they say / “I knew something was wrong / when she was standing at the foot of my bed / and said to me, / ‘I’ll be fine. I love you’” / And then I woke up / and knew it was a dream.