Cap Gun Veterans

Far behind that veteran white farmhouse
built long before the American Civil War
my brother and I played with toy guns.
He would put on gray and I wore blue.
Just like Gettysburg and Fort Fisher
we reenacted the battles every morning.
Our plastic rifles became our muskets
and the crops became the battlefield.
Hiding behind trees, crouching in grass,
we marched forward and fired lucid rounds
just as stray brethren did so long ago.
Sometimes I shot first and he would fall,
having struck down my kin in cold, clear blood.
Far behind that veteran white farmhouse
he and I would relive the American Civil War.
Yet my brother's feigned wounds healed,
and he would rise back up and walk home.
Because when our own wars came to an end
he had always lived to see another day.