SAVAGES

As with men, so with nations.

          

CONFRONTATION

The playground tactics I learned long ago

emerge again: that fight or flight response,

the pantomime of swagger, a dumb show

of surliness, the studied nonchalance.

How suddenly we find ourselves again

reverting to the primitive, the brute.

Beneath the suits are savages not men

prepared to fight to settle a dispute.

Now I face you as you face me, enraged

at what we see as stupid stubborness:

two grown men, antlers locked, and both upstaged

by female laughter. Swiftly we suppress

our burning anger, back away a pace,

unhurriedly, so neither loses face.