Let me go to the small town woods
where I was made; let me go
to the small town woods that
I grew into.

The woods that made me
were unkempt and filled with gravel pits
and prickly bushes; the woods where
I grew up were clean and the paths
were raked and pine-needled, and
the trees were tall and silent near dusk.
I learned to clumsy-walk and stumble
in the first, alone, daylight everywhere
filtered by thin leaves; I learned
more sinister walking in the second;
mostly at night, and mostly not alone.

Walking the first on hard soil packed flat;
walking the second on hard soil packed
just as flat between the roots that stuck up
everywhere. On moon-drenched nights,
I would reach back and hold a hand out
to the girl behind me, my heart beating
so fast and so loud I could feel it
tearing out of me as we approached
something, anything that was distant
from the campground…

and now that I am
sixty-four, now that I am alone with my thoughts
and my regrets, let me go
to the woods I’ve been to before: the
woods of my small town likely bulldozed
and compartmentalized; the manicured woods
where the paths are still kept clean
though I’m afraid to walk them for fear
of the dark beyond them.

A boy comes out of the woods alone in either case,
afraid and embarrassed and confused
from his soles to his pores. I know him
well, though we’ve not met. Not
in this life, at any rate; my own life
nearly done, I smile at the level
where he finds himself. I’ve been there,
after all. Let me go to the next place,
the next path, the next woods.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T