Charlie kicked the red dirt and watched it blow over his boot top;
He smiled as he thought he had done this every day of his life.
He looked at the sun playing in the gullies in the low mountains
Just a few miles down the road and remembered the big rattlesnake
He had run over on the stocktrail there and had almost gotten bit
When he tried to pick it up already thinking of the belt it would make.
He glanced at the big bird soaring and as it got closer and lower,
He was surprised to see it was a red-tailed hawk instead of a buzzard;
It must have been five years since he had seen one and somehow he knew
It was the same one, that time it had swooped down and grabbed a rabbit.
But it didn’t swoop down but caught a thermal and rose up
Again higher and higher until Charlie lost it in the clouds.

And now Charlie looked around again trying to suck it all in;
Because he knew that this was his home, all the way to his soul.
And come Monday next week, he would be leaving it all behind;
And he wondered how many other guys in his unit were thinking
Just the same kind of thoughts as they knew the time was growing short
And soon they would be loading up on the plane that would take them
So far away from their home and their families and friends and maybe,
Just maybe they held a place as sacred in their heart as Charlie did this.
But as Charlie kicked the red chert rock, he knew that, like him,
They had no choice-they had signed up and now they were being called up.
It didn’t matter that he didn’t really understand why he was going or where-
What mattered was that he had taken the oath.

And oaths were something that Charlie had learned from his family
Was the same as giving your word.