Amy Kitchener's Angels Without Wings Foundation
Presents the 2008 California Senior Poet Laureate


Harvey Thomas Sampson

HARVEY THOMAS SAMPSON, 77, Santee, California, retired Master Sergeant who served in the U.S. Marine Corps, was a 28-year employee with California National Guard. He writes poetry flavored with storyteller salt and spiked with cowboy-poetry pepper. He is a repeat SPL winner. His sign is Cancer.

THE LAST PATROL


Wind burned, grizzled and dog tired
The cavalry sergeant sat his horse.
The troops were tired and hungry.
They were expecting something worse.

Several hundred Apache warriors
Were gathering at the base of the hill.
There'd be no mercy shown today
It was a day to fight and kill.

"Check your ammo troopers,
We can't afford to waste a shot.
Save one for yourself lads;
Send your soul off somewhere hot.

Better to roast in the fires of perdition
Than have these savages take you alive.
If some miracle should happen
Keep it, to show you did survive."

Sometimes miracles do happen.
And one of them happened that day.
A smoke signal rose over hills to the east
And the savages turned and rode away.

I still carry that one bullet.
I'll carry it as long as I'm alive.
And I'll remember the sergeant's words,
For I am one that did survive.

Harvey Thomas Sampson
Santee, California