anyman.com

When you ask me
where the boy went
I listen
with the ears he left me.
He’s not here
in the sounds we each inherit
or the dinner down the hall
that sniffs around our room.
I have to catch him
past you
through the paler square of paint
through the nail hole
that bore
a former tenant’s portrait.

He’s alone there
still
beneath the slant-roofed ceiling
peeling slivers of old rose wallpaper
from anemic green plaster
older than both parents
added together,
threading the wall’s
dusty marrow
between thumb and fore fingers
wondering
how a house can be
ground down
easier than soil.

He points me out
through the window,
counts the miles
it takes
for a lit April crack
to reach us,
says I can’t
cry
when yardsticks
splinter across him
courtesy of Assumption Hardware
and Mom
too hot
in her prom dress picture.

He stops me
at the boundary
to his dense lilac hideout.
Leave him.
And his aromas
and tin can collections.
He only wants
a more dangerous fossil,
some press of angry bone.
Anything scarier
than a sandstone fern.
Next year
he rides
200 horses
over forty acres.

He dares me to race him
down quarter-mile rows
loses me running
through the wardrobes
of corn, their yellow hats rattling
over silky waist beards,
sharp sleeves whipping at him
slicing welts across his cheeks.
It would take days to find him
if ever he panicked.
He can’t
like Dad
find faith
in the odor of heaven,
some promise
of record harvests.

But he knows
grain claims air
from those who walk it
and nobody
goes up
the only elevators he’s seen.
His history’s a river bottom
that floods every spring.
His summers confess
to nothing but their sun.
He may come now
when you call him
and bring us
his stare.

.

© 2007, joesmith