eight thumping the stanchions
morning full with slurp and hiss
steaming white poured
into battered steel cans
holstein hybrids let out to pasture
their leavings shoveled and dumped
until the hollow space aches
for neighbor kids of an age
when now and then maybe yes
one culled from either tribe
though boys more likely in a barn
and what’s learned upstairs
hay motes in sunbeams
the turns a boy might take
*
then time’s a summer or two
after such grooming
he’s acquired some hows
if not why some in the woods
slid into a look better leap
sprint to evade
though he’d keep
trying the dark inbetween
with sometimes his clothes
hidden near side of the brook
else how could a boy be so
electric alive as only when prey
how deep every shouldn’t he
sometimes get caught
George Perreault has published in journals and anthologies in the US and alswhere,
Angel Rust 