Photo by Intermountain Forest Service, USDA Region 4 Photography

Pennock Trail

There was a boy who was a boy who was a tree who was a
river and a rock and a cloud. Who was a nothing more than
a something who wanted to be nothing but a flash under sky
over field. Who wanted to be a space between dusk and dark
between night and sunrise when the temperature drops just
before dawn and the ghosts of the hollers come running back
to their beds. Who was a breath when he should have been
a fist, a kiss when he should have been a kick, some ill-timed
sparkle of a boy in his mother’s dress, a bruised boy when his
father came home early when the mines got too hot to work
one summer day. Who stood naked in his changing body out
in the grapevines and crushed the long black fruit in his hands,
smearing his face in darkness. Who wanted just to pass, pass
white, pass straight, pass cool, pass normal. Who wanted to
remain 59 pounds forever. Who wanted things that could
never be named. Not things, people. Who would sleep beside
the river, in the crook of the old sycamore, out in a tent of
branches and leaves on the game trail. Who hoped, every day,
to wake changed into a deer, a good boy. Who wanted to run,
and run, and run until he woke up from this dream. Surely this
is a dream. Let it be a dream because no one can hear me.