But this is not the field the soldiers took with so few losses.
   Prophets never stop
beside the well sprung from the garden hose. A snake has

The mosquitoes love it. So do the children who pull on their
   mothers’ skins
to indicate that there’s a naked man outside. So there will

Before I bathed him, the dirt was so dense
that for all it was a second, firmer skin.
Boys as we know them do not have second skins.

This is worship, one could say, as pure as white
sheets in the sun, though there is no sun now.

I have lost my bachelorhood to hands I’ve made
grasp the fabric of my most famous couch.