He Considers What the Young Have to Teach
       

to stand up invisible
as a forked child squalls in the whip
and withdrawal of waves

black sand thrown at shins and toes
sensing
the slither of ground beneath

and surely love this thrill of it
knifing him ecstatic

establishing its open wound

its soul-shaping progress the young know
yet unaware of —

trying to re-learn this
in part the effort not to flinch

as the dog he trained when young
coursing wild goat and deer and hare

like its master
no quarry able to slip away —

yet when he returned
almost unrecognisably changed infested
with ticks

half-dead from twenty years of neglect
an old rug
lay in the agave shade

dog and master thumping in recognition

barely able to drag themselves together
each as unpalatable
no finer test

the unlovable other

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Copyright © 2011 Martyn Crucefix All rights reserved
from Hurt
Enitharmon Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission