At the Home for Disabled Veterans, Dong Ha, 1988

At the home for disabled veterans, two blind soldiers
stand hand in hand at the clinic door.
They hover anxiously at the entrance,
waiting to greet us.
They wear brown tunics, wool caps,
Ray Charles shades.
Beneath them a legless man in a blue beret
wheels himself forward on a wooden transom.
He scoots aside the chickens.
The three lean forward to smile into the lens
of the camera. They flinch only slightly
at the sound of the shutter closing,
the shudder of the flash going off silently
in the photographer’s hand.