Shibboleth
One didn’t know the name of Tarzan’s monkey.
Another couldn’t strip the cellophane
From a G. I.'s pack of cigarettes.
By such minutiae were infiltrators detected.
By the second week of battle
We’d become obsessed with trivia.
At a sentry point, at midnight, in the rain,
An ignorance of baseball could be lethal.
The morning of the first snowfall, I was shaving
Staring into a mirror nailed to a tree,
Intoning the Christian names of the Andrews Sisters.
“Maxine, Laverne, Patty.”
