W. Doug Bolden

Dirtroad, Alabama catches fire in the sunset and Pours dust down the road, The dried out smell of missed summer is Open to possibilities, with all its clearcut trees And rusty wire deeds, Fenced in and immaculately empty, Breathing up the hazy blue sea of sky Where a boy's First brush with death Was a roadkill one afternoon, Possum or squirrel, Dog as pet or dog as pest, Red and grey, like that first knowing of hell As a thunderstorm in the Evening time to release the built up tension Of the noon day heat. Those clouds were God's angry thoughts, and thunderbolts And lightning crashes were the clicking teeth of Six-legged deities, run amok like locusts, Feeding on the green of leaves. And fear was not being man enough To do it right. And fear was not being man enough To even be comforted by One's own ability to hide. Pecan and pine and oaks and old hanging maples, Willows and dogwood and peach and logs, The waves and incantations of passing stones Down, hand over hand, into the rivers that Are mostly streams, across memories That are mostly nightmares and mostly dreams. Saying goodbye rhymes with the whisper of a sigh, 'Cause none of them enunciated much of anything. His first brush with loud was a rule accidentally broken. His first brush with silence was knowing His father loved him. And his first brush with distances is how far Home is When he found himself thirty years on Down the street. Paved roads and old sand paths meet. Lighted up to cover the milky-way night. Lighted up to make shadows deep in the brush. Why is a four letter word, and he knows it like He knows many things. Why is a four letter Word. Why is absolutely nothing.