The war is fought by soldiers in machines

manufactured by their wives: steel skin,

for example, impervious to caress.

But I am single. I line up with conscripts.

I’m issued sleep confiscated from a civilian

in a safe country. I’m handed a photograph

of his lover to tape inside my locker.

I’m marched to a bed too narrow for her

and me and him together, though he lies

inside me, though she’s very slender.

How heavy this green blanket

lies against my neck! How cold this rifle!

I’m told the dream which he surrendered,

half in one ear, half in the other,

about Alaska. But it twists inside me.

Which of us is wolf? Which caribou?

Which the tundra? Nobody volunteers his throat,

his appetite, or his cold white isolation

for the sake of peace to anybody else tonight.

We circle on the snow, but the snow drifts over.

I wake beside you thousands of mornings later

when the sergeant shakes my shoulder

to ask if I want a kiss. If it seems too rough,

too desperate for one night’s separation

with only sleep between us, excuse me,

there was a war lost and almost a soldier

with it, not in the jungle with the rest,

but solitary, hunted, on the ice.