After a Boy Burns

Andy Powell

down a house, the town

can’t trust the boys to learn

their lesson with fire and flint

and fear, so they pray the boys

dream themselves wolfish

or fangtooths, who have never

seen the sun, don’t know dry.

Or that the rain makes rivers

through baseball diamonds,

and the boys chuck their matches

and mature before the chance

to imagine a time in which

they can light a firework.

The laundry on the lines doesn’t

get a chance to parch, must

be washed again to exorcise

the mold. The boy who became

a firefighter had to fight a fire,

a demand which made him

an eggshell, a thin windowpane,

and the town knows it missed

a white flag, or forgot to listen

to a boy who wanted to be man

but whose crock of tears seared

the skin of aluminum fathers.

The boys have swum or been

tugged beyond the riptide, or

hurl themselves into gorges.

The clouds slowly dry out,

but are still too damp to burn.