A Benefit of Hindsight

It was cold that night
when I walked out of doors,
looking at lighted windows
and wondering what it would be like
to stand behind them,
if there’d be sofas, television, food,
books and light and radiation.

There were those in the house
that I’d left, of course,
but also a man who looked at me
not as a right, but an obligation.

(‘I’d still love you if you were queer...’
how loving those words must have sounded,
to him. How riven with sorrowful burden,
to me, arriving so soon to the wake
of ‘queers are dangerous to kids.’)

It’s been fifteen years since that night,
and looking across the deep canyon
I see a child in a field, alone and cold.
Stood on a mound up which he’d walk
to feel aloft from everywhere.

As if he could escape the punishment
of eyes and bricks and school and home
by simply floating up.

He can’t express how dark
and cold the night,
how tempting to sleep on the mound,
between the busy road
and school perimeter.
He can’t even see me.
But I can see him,
and somehow that’s all that matters.