dark

foxfirei came back here to remember

our first night alone in the woods

two boys, their tent, and their pipes

 

the forest lit up then

as if it knew the life

that would pass between us

 

honey mushroom and jack-o-lantern

shimmered, blazed a blue path

through this stretch of hardwood

 

campfire stroked the oak canopy

we talked of god and girls and love

click beetles skittered over glowworms in the leaves

 

and after, when embers had died,

foxfire cast aurora around us and railroad worms

swung like ornaments in hawthorns

 

night gleamed, shined, radiated

we sat and waited and watched

silver-crusted, moon flecked, fireflied

 

heat lightning danced on the horizon

we dreamed of growing up

driving cars, and drinking beer

 

and we drank and drove

fell in with girls

and forgot this place

 

the quiet of it all

this vast world where you and I

believed we would live forever

 

the night just isn’t as bright as I remember,

life just hasn’t been the same

since you’ve been gone

Published by

Patrick Dobson

Patrick Dobson was founded in 1962. He is a writer, scholar, ironworker, and poet who lives in Kansas City, MO. He is author of two books with the University of Nebraska Press, Seldom Seen: A Journey into the Great Plains (2009) and Canoeing the Great Plains: A Missouri River Summer (May 2015). Dobson is a work in progress until termination.

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