Such an odd stance against the back-light.
A lone fence post.
Straggled barb wire weeping to the ground
like limbs, forgotten in exhaustion, being
dragged into twilight.
But from where I sit, I cannot tell, is it into
new day or lonely night our traveler sets his
stark, weather-beaten brow?
Going into dawn would make him a triumph.
One that has seen the mountain and the
valley and has come home with stories
and pockets full of trinkets for girls and boys
who always brush their teeth.
Into dusk makes him despondent and coarse.
He has been in a town and fits better
where there are no edges. It makes him bearded
and rough in the hands and face. He sticks
in the minds of the few he meets but never sticks
in their view.
The light rides the ridges and paints so thin
a strip of red that it is as if the black has been split
by a dragged razor and our man seeps into the blood
of this wound before it may close or open too wide,
spilling out all vicissitudes of nature, spoiling all mystery
and fear of the tiny places our minds crawl to when
stars are hidden and our world is but a single stoke
on a finger-painting.
I find that I am wishing him to be one o’er the other.
I want him to be the one I want him to be, the one
I need him to be.
He may change with the light, but I know he will
always be there.
I know he will always be here.
