by Mark Levine

    Beauty in its winter slippers pproached us by degrees on the gravel path.

    We were hitching a ride out； had been hitching.

    Our suitcase freighted with a few gardening tools lifted from the shed while the old man，

    old enough，looked away.

    He who went fishing at night （so he said） carrying in his pail a nest of tiny flame.

    We were headed， headed out，we were going in a direction.

    No tricks or intrigue， just a noisy ineptness.

    If that's a word. Beauty， dipped in resin beneath its shag，

    was always ready with the right curse to recite to our nature.

    It is in us， it is，in the smokehouse in the woods and the old man looked away.

    Song of experience.

    There were treads in the snow.

    We waited for our hitch.

    There were train tracks which stung with clods of this region's rare clay.

    We were boys， boyish， almost girls.

    Left alone on the roof， we would have dwindled.

    Incrimination called to us from the city and its fog-blacked lake，

    called to us from the salvaged farms beyond the lake，

    from the wilds beyond that.

    Guilty was good