Out in the sticks

Stick

Clutching at straw is undignified

at best, madly snatching at phantom

butterflies on the wing, fatal 
at worst for a man headed over 
the shaggy eaves of a storied thatch 
roof house, a lazy stutter of chaff 
cross-hatching his lifeless, mangled form, 
cooling hands closed around the memory 
of stout sticks, exquisitely suited 
through natural selection to 
grip and hold, grab and wield. 

Draw a line in the sand with a sharp stick,
dare all those pencil neck chumps, hands 
shoved in their pockets to take a giant

step and join the rest of us beavering 
away in the batter’s box or carving 
a morning wake, stabbing paint on canvas 
or snaring themselves in the soft shoe 
brushwork of an old jazz standard.

Tell them they can find me if they follow

the trail left behind by Peter, the boy  

in Ezra Jack Keat’s The Snowy Day,  
an old guy leaning on a shovel 
with a worn handle, hands yearning 
with desire for a stick; oak but ash 
would do, with which to bar the door 
to the incessant tapping of time.