Emergence

Ears digging into stale conversations
That were starting to lack legs
Sitting on the back porch eating tacos and barbecue
In the kingdom
Slobbering lips over meat
Gnawing and chewing
And spewing crap
And it's 10 guys
Farting and living and working in this country
Where fraternization with women is off limits
And suddenly we hear
A guitar playing angelically
Forbidden music
An actual WOMAN emerges
She's young, beautiful, and rom Baltimore
A hush falls around the circle
Hush spreading out over the tortillas and caulking the cracks of the chairs
We don't know what to say to her at all
The best part was when
She took charge to the tension and had us introduce ourselves
And we all were like little boys
Legs shriveling
She asked us one by one who we were
And what we were doing working in that country
At the WOMAN in front of us
And gnawed on the watermelon
And helped us to shake out the rubber bands and tweed of our backgrounds
From our pockets
And made us relaxed
And placed us in the world
And then sang a dirge
And then disappeared off with a boyfriend and a guitar
It was only a moment
Not anything Herman Melville would write about
But later one of them roared
That it was hearing her voice cutting through the usual mannish din
That it was the highlight of their weekend
In front of the boys
Like the German POW singing "Der treue Husar"