A Little Boy’s Prayer

Godspeed to the witnessed hunter,
Covered in skin and wool, down to fur-laden boots,
Timbered to the naked woods,
Paused into sense behind his eyes,
He travels to where the wild things are,
Sent to deliver return to man,
And to help the panting elk.

Brindled hair, Dutch-braided,
To be a boy is to rehearse for the foxhole,
To wear the six-pointed star inside his chest,
Silver as wolf piss,
And to aspire to pray a hole through the ceiling.
To needle his grandparents into bark,
To know that the most beautiful praying sites
Are the ones built by God.

Sweat-soaked skin closer to heaven,
With his worries left behind in the creek,
His white knuckles hidden from daylight,
Kneeling blindly at the hem of a ridge,
The shedding of pelt inside the shed,
Wings curved tight around his small existence,
He has forgiveness and a heart full.

He feels through the rucked foliage for the wound,
The first rain wets his hands,
An eyelash clings to his cheek, unblinking,
His hands learn its heavy weight,
Between differences of mercy,
And letting something be held too long,

Remembrance is a tall smokestack,
Moving down his body to his stubborn hooves,
And it is bearable.

Raw light sets the woods alive,
Bright and blue and white,
A mountain bowed to necessity,
The howl of a big, distant dog,
Growls in his tightened chest,
As the north wind crackles through the jackpines.

Let the peak of antler pierce with violent passion,
Rasp through birch, through his small chainmail knit,
And enter his heart’s summit,

Between the connectedness of breath and life,
This winter sun was a weak thing above the tree line,
Halfhearted, small,
As he seems, too.

Through the glass tower,
Boreal winds pass through the hunter,
And river water runs down his exposed spine,
Cursive arteries splayed on wooden floorboards,
And his camo is fully bleached,
He stands.
Taller only because something beneath him is gone,
This is the shepherding of the self,
Bearing the sacrifice of what has been asked to take.

Be brave, little boy, for February braved you.

Now I sit among the stillness of a hard hush and bitter coffee,
Counting hours by the shatter of lake light,

Oh, I’ll do the boy proud,
I hunt for boyhood,
And I hope I am a good man.
Emunah.