comes like the evergreen motion of spring, makes this boy
who lives twenty five miles from anyone his age, his own
best friend, makes May’s bright blue air…red pools of water
on red-dirt roads and a mud dirty dog running beside
him biting the air in celebration, his reason to be in this sense-
drenched, sun-warmed spirit of the earth in revolution…
sharing the dog’s delight to be alive, singing it in the endless
soprano syllables releasing winter from a dry brown silence,
and terrible loneliness of its stores of ice and snow. Love
loose again on the ‘Snowy Range’, he sings out his
faith in the future to his mother…wanna’ see me empty
the mud puddle…wanna see me jump the dog…wanna’
see me do a wheelie…staccato syllables slicing the air like
“Laramie River’s” priapic thrust down glistening flanks
of canyon walls, percussive rhythms seeking the inexhaustible
mouth of high mountain meadows, expectations
swelling in the sweet ache of spring calling them to more,
more, more…nothing but the future he declaims when he
falls, “…didn’t hurt, wanna’ see me do it again!” everything
out in front, begging them to chase the sky blue butterfly,
delighted with the mystery of things they can’t catch, and
the river’s wild freedom, flinging a fence post as if a leaf,
one he helped his father make secure with dirt and wire up
river—free again to make jazz impressions upon the eye,
as it surges back in time—joining chaste green beginnings
of sense-drenched, sun-warmed spirit of bright blue skies
surging toward the exaggerated glory of autumn, already growing
in dark red buds waiting in wet black branches of trees.
About Larsen Bowker
