Machine Gun

How do we know
we are modern?  Because
the song of the machine gun
so often answers our morning sun.

It’s not a hymn, we tell ourselves,
but some god must adore it,

its rattlejack melody
and simple chatter so commonplace
we don’t look up when we hear it
on a television show, in a movie,

but let the chorus start before us,
in person,
let our days threaten to end with this
before we have begun them

and we understand so much,
feel a kinship with millions
who’ve heard it through the years,
begin to imagine ourselves
at Wounded Knee, in the Ardennes,
San Juan Hill, countless villages.

Maybe it is a hymn we’re hearing.
Maybe this is our true religion:

a faith born of duck and cover,
cower and hide.  This god
brings us together with shared whispers
and screams, making us
equals
under the clouds of lead.