Sonnet to a Lifetime

They laughed at one another as they threw
their mortar boards aloft, and dared to kiss
the girl goodbye, though she had spurned them in
the dry years underneath the towers, high
above their academic rounds. Now boys
no more, and war much brighter than their lust
for adolescent loveliness, the bus
and train will take them to a new domain
where pleasure girls will lie for them, compressed
in six short weekends hence, until possessed
with skill to kill, men pack their gear to fly
across the globe and die in puzzlement,
identified, and boxed and neatly laid
to rest beneath a cool and restless shade.
~