To God who made me, the clouds move toward us on that field.
It has just rained & the street is flooded again.
A boy whose face I do not remember has been dancing in
the rain & has now caught a cold.
We gather around him as good friends do & because he sneezes, we sneeze.
As our shadows fall into the corridors of our fathers’ house,
we ask ourselves what we want to become in the future.
One says police. Another says pilot. I say I want to be a thief. We laugh.
I want to run all my life because I have seen the magic wind does to a garment in motion.
We gather our feet and count. & because “even number” rhymes with “evil number,”
you are a thief, the game master calls. Because “odd” rhymes with “Lord,”
you are catching the thieves. We sort into our numbers.
At the count of three, we go into hiding, he commands. We begin the search of our lives,
running from corridor to corridor, searching. Little boys of this world tending
to desire the way god tended the garden. Because I want to be found, I sneeze.
The boy carrying the wood shaped like a gun has so much compassion
& he can’t shoot at me. He smiles and keeps running. Later, it becomes fully dark
& the moon stands by watching our performance of escape. Our mothers,
who have finished cooking dinner, bring their benches & sit outside, watching
the galore of night dancers. The wind arrives briefly, and we trace the dark with our hands.
When we
finally tire & our breathing arrives together, we gather in a circle, our feet touching.
& as we begin to count, a boy says, the last to get home is a fool.