When I Was a Boy

I wouldn’t try your patience.

Not like a black lab with a tennis ball

that won’t drop it, however much

he wants you to throw it again.

I would race to win, openly,

when I was a boy. I took after

my father then, and when I saw

a tossed butt in the gravel

still fuming, I picked it up

and raised it to my lips, like a man.

I knew precisely where

Wanek property ended, and I ordered

other children off our land

when it pleased me to do so.

I had a cap gun and rolls of tiny red

explosions to force-feed it.

I was not yet convinced

that when people died,

they stayed dead, because

when I was a boy

friends rose again from the field,

grass in their long hair, having grown

ten seconds older, ten seconds

closer to their other fates.