I strummed but music wouldn't come, my thumb
and fingers numb with numbers in summer school,
my last math class before the draft.  Call it
romance that didn't last, the rash decision
of a kid bitter at a world gone mad,

simpler than admitting he wanted guns.
Cocky before boot camp, I was sure we'd win,
heirs of uncles who fought at Normandy,
fathers who whipped the Kaiser to stop all wars.
While we humped on ten-mile hikes and crouched

on firing lines, the truce hit Korea
like a typhoon--no war when we waded ashore
but refugees and tons of rations stacked
like rubble, Red Cross trucks and clerks
directing traffic back to the States.

Years later, I flew to a war in Vietnam,
flanked by rockets and pictures of family,
picking guitar strings like beads.  And now
our Army son is in Korea, at risk
near the DMZ, as old as I was dodging rockets

outside Saigon.  Nights, I think of friends
on a wall in Washington, counting months
until our sons return, wondering
where soldiers will face another war,
if our grandsons will have to go.