Senior Trip

Senior Trip

We're driven deep into Pennsylvania's forest, ten teens, promise-stuffed,
so future-certain, our last time together, caps and
gowns waiting back in the gym. We're tented separately:

military-canvas cubes and poles:
smiling Ms Williams with the girls,
mathematical Mr Smith with the boys

we spend the days snaking spiderwebbed
paths, feeling taller than the pines
that surround us. We collect the flesh-falls
of trees -- scraped piles of bark to feed

our night fires. Black walnuts, like grenades
full of ink-and-stain pinball their way
down in branch-bounces. We gather
satin-bodied acorns with lizard skin

caps. I hoard them like a currency. After
hotdogs strung on sticks, fireroasted, we
hike the hill to a flat-topped water tower where
we lie back: spot planets, satellites, a comet.

We climb back down and the stars fall,
their points catch in our skin.