Certainty is Another Word for Despair

Certainty is Another Word for Despair

The boys have divided
themselves onto opposite halves

of the ridge. The pines
continue dying

of beetle infestation,
the whole southern sky

heaves & swirls, ash
snowflaking slowly down.

The boys have amassed
arsenals of dirt clods

& pinecones. Rocks
are strictly off-limits,

though as the campaign
drags on one boy

is hit with a sharp stone,
a line of blood

bisecting his forehead.
That boy is my brother.

The older (but poorer
& generally less liked)

boy who tossed the rock
cowers in the rusty trees. He

unites us, becomes—
in a perfect barrage

of clods & cones—
everyone’s easy enemy.

Until over us all
a cropduster arrows

& dives to nearly kiss
the field’s green face,

& we, boys
unacquainted with such

grace, abandon
our weapons. This one war

over, my brother
will carry a pale squiggle

of scar. The older boy
will carry in the wet

of his bones the threads
of an inoperable cancer. I

will carry in the dark
pocket behind my heart

the sure, terrifying sound
of my own voice—

Get him, get him, get him!

Joe Wilkins is the author of the novels The Entire Sky and Fall Back Down When I Die, both of which garnered wide critical acclaim. His latest collection of poetry is Pastoral, 1994. He lives with his family in the foothills of the Coast Range of Oregon.