and let God’s good dirt take me where it will.
Church tradition tells me to count everything
as loss, but I’m not prepared to surrender
myself to the Beeches, Pines, and Birches
crowding out what sun the day maintains.

As humid August air slips over my head
like a wet bag, I remember last week
there was another march in another American
city chanting another name slain by the law.

I haven’t asked the Lord how to suffer
the loss of everything with joy, including
this: false trails regressing into wild, sudden
clearings opening into cul-de-sacs with signs
warning trespassers will be shot. Even now
I ponder what it means to wander nowhere
like the boy who ran with feral dogs for two years.

If they find me, I won’t appear as they assume:
undressed, on all fours, growling with every step.
I’ll be fluent in birdsong, mosquito-hum,
and bee-buzz. My lungs will be as robust as trees
sharing enough oxygen for a nation to breathe.