‘The sun came through our skins,
and we beheld, at last,
the exact, sudden definition
of our shadow.’

(Derek Walcott, Another Life 12.I.60-63)

They covered the damn thing in pine tar
to keep down the slivers. There were other
ways to raise minor wounds. We’d hang
by our feet from the fire pole or launch over
gravel-covered concrete and catch the far bars
in blistering hands. Various narratives—the same
series of tricks and teeterings. Encroaching
twilight reddened us with sunset, as though
the sun came through our skins.

This time of year ripples,
its geometry sketches out
potential images in the angle
of the sun under the elms
and over the low roofs.
Calvin Rees stuck his foot
in a gopher hole one summer
and we all observed our first
compound fracture.
David Sauer died
from a bee sting a week later,
introducing us to anaphylactic.
This was the place I Algered up
and we beheld, at last,

the little aerated field again, turd-like cylinders
of hard dirt stinking in the summer air,
a field full of holes covered in time capsules
each marking a moment that went unmarked.
We cared much less for significance then.

Turned outward we had no need for precision,
for mapping the way back, should we need it,
content with something Hanseline
since sorbed into the soil,
the exact, sudden definition

of another life.
For young skin and blood
lost, I have inklings
that begin from here
and need no map
with which to conspire.
The sun collects
this entire ground
in the outlines
of our shadow.

by Chris Jennings
from: Vacancies, ©2003