I find them at somebody's house,
maybe mine, four to a porch swing,
others straddling the concrete wall
or dangling their legs in the dark.
Always, someone has brought a keg
or a cooler. The neighbors' dogs bark
and one of us shouts back. Moon glints
on somebody's blade, cleaning his nails,
tossing mumblety-peg in the dark.
We don't talk politics. We know what we know,
clock running backward that won't stop.
We take turns telling jokes we heard
outside Saigon, groans better than silence.
We saddle stallions of our minds and hunt
for something to say, not one of us with guns.
Chatter is a ball we crack like polo
past draft dodgers, across borders into Laos
into Thailand, then home again to the porch,
nobody talking, the last keg drained,
time to go back to our wives
across town waiting, willing to sleep.
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