Thomas J. Langan Tom, Tom, Tom, and Thomas,that’s how the family tree goes.My grandfather’s eighteenth birthday,humid and bullet-riddled,smelled of gunpowder and tobacco smoke. He would’ve mocked poetry,and hated hippies,though he spent Walden-timeamong the slender firs and red maples,scanning for bucks and turkeys.The tree stand, throne of hardness,bore witness to stillness on duskyNovember mornings.He’d hidden in … Continue reading Vietnam