A Deserter Inheritance

A Deserter's Inheritance

Roughly five branches up the tree, the height

he might have perched above marsh-suck

and hollow click of fiddler crab to clamp

eyes on the black plume of Sherman’s North 

as it burned down from Atlanta, someone 

who bore some portion of my double-barreled

helix waited till dusk to throw off the grey

of his conviction and silently return 

to the rubble of the family farm. He mended

the fence, but since has slipped his post

again, surrendering a surname firm-set

as the charred ribs of Old Sheldon Church,  

too deep to uproot or wholly cave in 

but left to gather moss as they lean 

like a head-tilt, wondering—as maybe

we’re all left to wonder, gathering the gleanings 

of ourselves—just what to make 

with the peculiar bevel of these beams.