Because There Were Boys Who Weren’t Allowed To Go: Chores:

Because There Were Boys Who Weren’t Allowed To Go:

Chores:

Hard on the land wears the strong sea

and empty grows every bed

                        John Berryman

                        Dream Songs – I

what is a saved life exactly?

a hoed row when more than too soon

pruned roots lie cut with weeds

each the color (after sun) of late peas, spread

wide on an attic floor

                        when days before

                        they’d opened a window

                        and swept the under-

                        side of the roof with rags,

                        a broom, their mouths

                        and noses gagged

                        for the bat shit

                                                spic

                                                &

                                                span

                        their mama said

                                                we got

                                                beans

                                                and peas

                                                corn

                                                seed

                                                I won’t have no bats

                                                or rats pissin’

                                                n’ shittin’

                                                all over

                                                you go up

                                                scrub buckets

                                                hot water

                       

                        until not one was spared

                        against the work
                        to stay home from the lake

                        and traps were laid

                        and all the cracks closed against those bats

                        their cheep and tweet

                                                shell and shuck,

                                                take them to the barn

                                                (you want bats

                                                but not near

                                                those peas

                                    and keep it clean, sweep

                                    it every night—

so it would be there, he was in

the attic,

the almost man

sweeping and one rat

gawking out the trap

he was about to throw out

the window to the trash

when he saw down the drive-

way the utter sag

and drag of the foot and face

of his friend
just dropped off at the end
of the lane, 

but being so far up the lane it’s a voice

without the voice – until it carries

up to him and by then

it’s as pitched and pinched

as a  swallow caught

in the claws of some hawk –

he hears it above the tree line

he thinks, that streak…

then the shriek.