You fly jets in one war,
I teach school
to stay out of another.
I oar past the Odyssey.
You blow past Top Gun.
Yet my dog—
hyper, smaller, younger—
dances in harmony
with your bigger,
older, laid-back rescue.
Never missing,
over your right hip,
a concealed holster.
I don’t have much to say,
when you articulate
the possibility
of mass unrest,
even civil war.
Mostly I just listen.
Until talk turns
to your restored ‘70s Chevy pickup,
my new hybrid Ram four by four.
Your desire to raise falcons,
my cravings
to wind-sail desert flats.
By our square-shouldered,
fading-hairlined laughter,
our before-we-die dreams,
we could be brothers.
Maybe one day our minds
will waltz down the road,
arm in arm.
Ideas as different as dogs,
alike in one not fearing the other.
Nothing on your hip
to whisper us apart.
