Cattle Call

I thought the girls were silly, back in nineteen sixty five,
when they came out against the war, a million miles away.
Fast for peace, their buttons read, pinned to their swelling chests;
feast for war! I mocked—they fired on us—let’s blow them all away!
More intent was I on little Nancy Swope, when she shifted in her seat,
and flashed a glimpse of pink between the buttons of her blouse…

But that day when class abruptly halted,

and on the glaring TV screen, Johnson came to life:

My fellow Americans, he drawled, I need a hundred thousand more…
I swear I saw the words come from his mouth, alive as they could be—

I swear I knew right then and there—they were lies, they were lies…

“Cattle Call,” David called it, when he came home to Tricky Dick,

with some shit that blew us all away—

a cattle call it was that caught him, back in nineteen sixty six…

By nineteen sixty nine, I had a newborn child—

I carried her one autumn night, among a million more,

up Pennsylvania Avenue, and placed a single candle on the wall,
where a million candles cast their glow, upon the White House lawn.
That baby kept me out of war, after I quit school. Still,
I envied those more brave, who burned their cards,
And let the pigs drag them away…

Not long after, David took my wife and child, and I drifted west;
never was I bitter, though—I liked him anyway…

And now, by god!--fifty years have passed; David's teeth are missing—
lost to demons he brought home, that haunt him to this day.
Yes, I thought the girls were silly, though they were right—

but even so—how did they know, how did they know?