MindSpinner

The orange tent out back
will come down today.
The blue cooler still partly filled
with ice and cans
of Coke and Ale 8
will be emptied.
Diverse sleeping bags
will be wrangled into rolls,
more or less,
and stashed away.

The boy who invited his
best buddies over for a rolicking
midnight Airsoft battle
(and when he was two
strode straight into the roiling surf
of his very first sea)
will be leaving
on Tuesday for eight
months of training.
His Special Forces unit
has already been calling
to see how long
’til he’s ready.
Military Intel people,
so it seems, are needed yesterday.

On the other hand,
last night’s 6mm plastic BBs
will be unearthed in my garden
for the next thousand years.
Green. Blue. White. Yellow.
I swept up the ones
strewn across the driveway
near the car and the wood pallet
stood on end for defense,
but I will not pick up
the ones fired and fallen in the garden
among the carrots and the onions,
the thyme and the slender
green blades of iris.
Not even one.