Years ago, when my wife and I drove deep into red clay
for a Georgia wedding, we explored outside Atlanta.
We both loved antiques and quaint
shops with doodads and local candies,
but noticed Army recruiting signs,
by most of the cash registers,
an expected rite of passage
for recent high school graduates—a way to glory,
a badge of honor to escape dirt roads,
closed store fronts, weedy playgrounds—
the bright cardboard signs spelling fodder
for the great Mad Cow in the sky
who chews and chews and cuds them up.
On the news this morning, a father and his son
from Georgia, argue for Freedom
not to wear masks or distance
as they mass-return to school despite every Covid warning.
The curly-blond boy,
a linebacker on the football team,
mouths Freedom as if it were something stuck in his teeth.
His Dad, sporting a Bass cap,
mouths the same words like a fish gasping for air,
asserts his right to get sick and die
just as the young men and women did so long ago
when I was younger and thought it would change.
Originally published on Rat's Ass Review