Pine

I still had two friends, but they were trees.

—Larry Levis

In the dark we lugged someone's farfetched bounty From a truck's black cab and it was a bad idea And a bedevilment better than the rocks we'd thrown At the dogs behind each low fence, the branches we'd torn From saplings barely rooted to the fields, Boomie and I, Our heads in a swivel of trouble, our two tongues Swigging distractions, a few hour's worth of wrong turns Behind us, we were restless and miles from home, Dark boys roaming in the dark. We found a pick up truck Unlocked outside a small hotel and in its cab: trash bags Fat with clothing and house wares, a toaster and vacuum, Waiting to be used again by someone checked in for the night, Maybe a runaway wife reversing her dreams, a streak Of red wine sleeping on her tongue while elsewhere Her husband was in the dark because he didn't know yet: She was gone, she was gone. For no good reason We took the bags from the truck and propped them Below the pine trees which, like everything in the dark, Belonged to us. And to anyone approaching, our laughter Must have sounded like the laughter of crows, those birds That leave everything beneath them trampled and broken open, Those birds dark enough to bury themselves in the dark. But we were not crows, and we were not quiet until it was too late. I was thrown against a tree as if I weighed less than a shadow, A hand clutched the back of my neck as if it wasn't a neck. Cuffed later inside the break proof glass, I watched The policemen nuzzling everything we'd touched, Slithering, their faces calculating absolutes while the trash bags Shimmered in a fiasco of light. When I looked up, I saw Boomie nearly twenty feet high in the arms of a pine, Almost nothing visible, but his white shirt and white shorts. I could feel him feeling as sorry for me as I felt for him, And I said nothing. Think of what the tree might have said If it could speak: Hold me for a moment then, let me go... Something an unhappy housewife might say To her husband on the last night of their marriage, Or a boy to policemen when he's locked in a squad car. I heard a voice between their voices issuing numbers, Codes or uninterpretable verses, addresses in a bewildered city. I was to be taken somewhere and given a name More bona fide and afflicted, I was to be shot Through the knee and then shot through the jaw, Boomie must have thought. Even when the scene was clear, He must have remained. It must have been like clinging To the massive leg of God— If the leg of God is covered in bark, if prayer is like waiting For the darkness beneath you to change Into something else, If it's like waiting in the darkness to be changed.