searching time

It is not my back

Up against the wall

Of this tall, branchless pine,

Which stretches and stretches

And does not end.

It is the little one,

Spine arched against the cold,

Who wants to go up.

He threatened first when he was 12

Beyond jokes of masturbation and thin, worn

Doormats in the basement

by the tools, he wore all black

Stopped pretending to be jack

black or daniels and muted

his high pitched laugh.

In the backyard, sun filters

Green and yellow across the grass

Towards the largest cemetery

In the small town. Beyond, a long dead trunk

Withered by wind and hardened to rot

Whispers of what it’s seen.

Today they found him by the bird sanctuary.

Honda parked pristinely within one of the two spots

Leading down through mulberry and birch.

But then his mother was well known.

He would recount stories of abuse but

In the suburbs you learn an inactive form

Of listening.  Like clipped dog’s ears,

Blind to lower sounds—the clicker did no good

For him. The forms that hold us,

What we might do today, or what we

shall ever do, for him, were threadbare

and woven of needles, witnesses to their own failure

to be more.

Red and orange and yellow and full of

Blood. Dying by the edges this time of year.

The leaves form something too clear.

He sent me.

When I could not stop in the lunchroom

And he had the whole jar inside him.

That day I embarked

(And we never stop)

by whispering the truth to a giant Hart

And sending the flashing lights down harris rd.

And yet it was then he disappeared for years.

Today he disappears again.

On the phone, I hear John running through the woods.

Sam, he says, just sent Danny a letter.

Do you have your car?

Look for a white Honda suv.

He could be anywhere.

oh please

How long has it been

Since holing up

In these dirty carpeted apartments over hairdressers,

Piling cans against the black gunmetal

Of a walmart firepit in the lot bordering the highway?

I wonder if I understand the great journey he is on anymore.

When I come back to visit,

Mike tells me it is a struggle to stay close to it.

Something so bright it could end it all.

But we knew it made us what we were,

When we were young. That didn’t mean

We weren’t afraid.

My dreams have been growing in power lately,

For everyday I close my eyes

and try to be the man I said I would be

yesterday. Sam heard the call,

As he did 12 years ago.

Clear and bright like a bugle.

Perhaps it has never stopped calling.

low and resonant in its notes like a copper bowl.

His eyes must have suddenly changed,

Alert to their staring

As if late at night, anxious,

Staring straight into the lid.

Chipmunks live below the rocks here,

Chirping fear out to the clear cut patch of swamp

Just beyond the property line.

They go under and around me.

We share the animal sense of something not understood—

 the moment you are suddenly aware you have the choice.

Crab apples sweetly stink in the fading light.

What courage it takes not to make a hole!

To stare down the human being

As the shadows lengthen

and you begin to feel your back

Up against the whole world.

I imagine him

A week from now,

Sitting once again in the white walls

But this time smiling

And holding in his cupped hands

A bit of water

That is never still.