piebald

did you forget that ghost of a boy
who’d flit into the sunny spots
we’d sometimes find in forests
when we used to lose our way

funny how we seem unable
to find those places
anymore

he was always hungry
not for anything but light
he was thin

and his clothes were sun-bleached too
how he craved the billowing white
that dark haired boy with eyes of night

sometimes still
startled from sleep in some black hour
i see him

at the far end of the pasture
beyond the weathered stumps
and red-capped lichen

there used to be a piebald pony too

but now the fence is gone
and the barn’s been razed
there’s no place for ponies

or pale-faced boys