Afterlife outside
the scars on my hands overlap,
a crisscross map of urgencies
and feeble judgment,
of blindly reaching for
admirable manhood at ten,
digging a bullet from a post,
pocket knife folding
to the bone of a left finger.
The hay hook at sixty
sunk into the back of my right
wrapped in blue bandana
until the steers were shipped—
a long white mountain range
that intersects a short ridge
I have forgotten.
Outside white cuffs
they look like clubs—
but they have loved
from the beginning,
yet wear no scars for that.
drycrikjournal 