If he had known
his friends
would split
his lip and
bang his head
on frozen ground
with purpose
snaking past the rules
of tag or keepaway
or even football
which his size
and friends (at such
an early age) have
marked him for,
and if he had
seen the wrens
gathering to run
from the coldest days
and watched the crisp
frost tell the edges
of green late weeds
and brown grass,
and when the harsh
turns in the yard,
stiff-arms to the trees
and right-left cuts
off the crucial knees'
best efforts
all had been
spent for good
or sufficient
reasons,
the precisest time
to call for blood
or comfort
would have been
no easier to know.
At his age
I knew less than he
of shock at the jaw
and body resonance.
My teeth loosened
for a fight
only at seventeen,
not for five-year-
old football with nine-
year-olds, too full
to pause or stutter
at audacity
or to fear for teeth
--everything at five
reparable or sure
to grow back
with time
and nourishment.
I see the heavy crows
rise singly and more often
one after another
to abandon their own noise
and bequeath spare branches
fields and fields away
across the creek
I bridged and dammed
with friends
when leeches drawn
for naked sweat
in the dark green pool
of leaves and gray clay
and baiting urine
(Take a leak, catch a leech)
were a prize upon
our cool expectant
flesh--no threat--
for our pure pride,
and time is measured
only in reverse.
--Robert W. Hill
Billy Goat, 1978,
repr. Teaching English in the Two-Year Colleges, 1979