Sometimes I catch the sound
of a boy's voice — a scrape, a scraping there, in the doubts
between what's certain. A boy's voice, bound
deep to old griefs and wonder. No wonder its roots
are hidden. You find yourself beside yourself
like a wild thing crashing
through suburban thickets, arriving all at once, helpless,
in an over-stocked backyard. Asking
or answering are the usual routes; murmuring time,
so slight, then postponed. But the boy's voice
has its music, a mixture made of crickets, pine-
cones, stones, trinkets — muffled deep in lint. A boy
with all the hours in the world, and long days I never knew,
a boy come whistling, whispering: sorely, scraped, and true.











From Poetry Magazine, Volume 190, Number 2 May 2007. Used with permission.