A man in a veterans's hat
round, squat and still
sits in a folding chair
outside a Safeway supermarket
selling poppies to the late
afternoon Friday rush
to commemorate warriors
lost in the citizen mist.
Once you've been in the ranks
the military always
stops you in your tracks:
"What was your war," I ask
in a shorthand run at history
handing him a dollar.
"WW II," he replied
speaking out of a deep crouch
before falling back into himself.
In a serious kind of banter
like I was filling up a huge space
I responded "Vietnam"
as if that was punctuation enough
and knew I had opened the door
to the next battalion
going off to fight, equipped
with small words
that like a clipped salute
or an effortless right oblique
can hold as much love
as a fighting man can muster.