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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