It was a dry-weave hiker’s undershirt

he never took off.

Embedded at the nape of the neck

were three flat, green worms

fossilized into the fabric.

He did not like change, but kept

moving through range after range,

a backwoods man

we hardly saw, elusive as the albino bear.

When we found him,

even the wool of his sweater was thin.

We unpeeled him clinically

as if he were mummified –

2000 years old – but it was only him, the one

we’d believed to be there all along,

though we had come to recognize

how long he’d been missing.