Provincetown Fourth

Here we are
in our doughboys and camos, our doughty frocks
with drips of bitter on the sleeve, our passions revving
their pulp to pittance at a gas station
                                 in the city that never peeps—   

                                 and here is the city
with its Martians in leather and excoriated thunderbolt-
boas, its Bible-trippers, its vintage bazookas for barter
not sale, its reluctance to be reluctant, its speed
for hire, into which we atrophy ourselves to briefly fit—   

                                 and we are never
so close to the joys of oil, the grease inside which a fat
becomes a fit, as we bellow magnanimously praise
on the least well of those who pass, ones who are dying

we salute: we are coming from the war, they are going   
to the war—