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.