Deserter
DESERTER
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 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 mended
the fence, but has since slipped his post
again, surrendering a surname firm-set
as the ribs 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,
are handed down the monumental
task of making something of.
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