I learned of life’s fragility
as I left home for

fourth-grade class
one May morning

to find boots with
a body attached

under our tall
juniper
tree.

He followed the buck past
the wormwood barn

down the game trail
into and out of

three hundred yards
of multiflora rose

(so thick his jeans
raveled like terrycloth)

to shoot and leave for
dead, walked away.

Food for thought, the school
is torn down, McDonald’s
took its

place, and the old man
living in the corner
house

masturbated on his  front
porch until the police
stopped him

is decades dead, I don’t
remember his name

but the poor as horse meat
children who attended
class with me

I see like clean
glass.

She dug ***** after
***** of soil until
the hole was

long, and deep enough
to cover Brownie’s tan
and white speckled
body;

I was twelve years
old, and Beverly
fourteen.

Sometimes I smell your hair
and pretend to lay my
chest against you

like on those nights after
building  a pine  fence
around the yard

of  a Baptist preacher’s
house in Georgia
forty miles

from cold beer and café pie,
and then I remember that
was 20 years ago

before you and me
drove different
highways.

Cur pillaged
garbage bag

Tampons strewn
cans licked

Rotten pumpkins
beneath canoe

Neighbors argue
redneck chatter

Dead squirrel
atop  car

Wild garlic
crooked fence

Open door
pour coffee.

Jingle click
keys, hinge
squeak;

step on  five
gallon bucket,
hoist out

window, disappear
Durham Avenue,
walk.