An Army of One

Whenever I see a boy with a stick
I think of you, four years old, yellow
binoculars on a string around your neck,
a plastic dagger tucked in your elastic-waist
jeans, a quiver of suction-cupped arrows
strapped across your back. As we hiked,

you marshalled munitions. Blades of dried
leaves dangled off one whole branch
you dragged, your stutter of footprints
raked clean. A stick, stripped of bark,
fit in your hand like a pistol,
the trigger bald as bone.

Your gaze steadily skimmed the ground
littered with weapons, the grasslands cleaved
by wind or a possible slither of snipers.
And I wondered who you fought
and who you sought
to protect.