When Names Escaped Us

The boy painted himself white and ran into the darkness. We let the words “he may be dead, bury him,” bury him. We took his clothes to the rummage sale in the basement of the mission We put his photographs and drawings in a birdcage and covered it with a starquilt. For four nights voices carried clear to the river. After winter so many storms moved in strangers came among us They danced They shoveled in the shadows of trees Then, somehow we all felt all of us were of this one boy.