What was a panty raid, anyway, I wondered, 
as I sniffed the spring breeze, May 4th, 1970, 
Burlington, Vermont, waiting for my roommate 
to douse himself in Brute and Binaca? 
Would we gather our cotton underwear in hands 
that had known no harvest, parade across campus, 
waving them like flags or clouds or dreams drifting 
toward our future? Or was it their panties 
we were after, to snatch from clotheslines, tumbling 
dryers, open drawers, or that barely 
imaginable triangle where radars jammed 
and things went wildly off course? The stiff wind 
held far-off towns and clouds gunmetal gray as dusk 
closed over. When finally we were revved, bursting, 
flashlights powering holes in the night sky, 
ready to divvy up whatever loot we’d find— 
when, in short, we were strapped in, ready for 
the long ride to manhood, or wherever we thought we were going, 
the leaders relayed the change in plans, 
the radio news—that monks had wrapped 
themselves in robes of flame, and soldiers wrapped
in body bags were flying home, and now this— 
this rumor grown to legend and legend to life, 
until we all tasted metal in our mouths and something else, 
hot and desperate and large, undeniably among us that was 
not us alone, and four names were on our tongues, four names 
as we marched away from our teens and toward that strange country 
called twenty, and as for me, a fifth name was on the wind 
that night, a name marching toward me across the college green, 
a vigil-candle cupped in her small hands, and whether 
I got in her panties that night I cannot say, for the wind 
was up and the rain came down and we cupped our candles 
for all we were worth, trying to keep that guttering flame 
going as long as we could for the four dead in Ohio.