Color War
At the end of camp
Our counselors bussed us out
To a field by the highway
To play capture the flag
We painted our faces our team color
My cheeks and nose bloody with red paint
Running unrestricted through knee-high grass
Ankles ravaged by mosquitos
Handkerchiefs tied over our foreheads
We screamed hoarsely at each other
Whispered business-like our strategies
Words hot on each other’s necks
It seemed like endless dusk
The sun never beat down on us
The first splash of fireflies lit up the grass
Looking around I saw nothing
But field and wood and children
They had set us down in another world
And we would readily have disappeared there
Never gone home to our families
Left hollows in the beds of our rooms
Our happiness
unrivaled
We sang our team song
After we secured the last flag
Our roughened feet stomping
on the metal bleachers
Deep into night
In the morning
We wandered out from the woods
Into a patch of yellow flowers and dusty ground
Scuffed our shoes across railroad ties
Our bus looked like an alien aircraft to me
Huffing smoke out of its exhaust
I ran my hand down my dirt-streaked arm
The skin and muscle, the bone
Was all still there
I could not believe it
I never went back to camp after that first summer
In the hard polishing of adulthood
I have rubbed off most of that magic
That golden tinge of almost crossing a line
Only occasionally
A memory will rage up inside of me
Push its fists up through my heart
Like a skinny kid leaping
into the air
into the air
