Deserter

DESERTER

Roughly five branches up the tree, the height

he might have perched above marsh-suck

and occasional click of fiddler crab

to clamp eyes on the black plume of the North 

as it burned down from Atlanta, someone 

who bore some portion of my double-barreled

helix waited till morning to throw off the grey

of his conviction and silently return 

to the rubble of the family farm.

He has since slipped his post again,

surrendering a surname firm-set

as the skeleton of Old Sheldon Church,  

too deep to uproot or wholly cave in 

but wondering—as maybe we’re all left

to wonder, gathering the gleanings 

of ourselves—just what to make 

of the particular tilt of these beams

we've stumbled upon, were built around.