#72: July 4, 2006

That day Dewayne was digging by the fence--
just eight years old, hair like a tuft of straw
under his cap. On my way out I saw
him crouching there, and haven't seen him since.

Then later on that week, the local law
came by to call. I told them what I'd seen:
the boy, the brown post fence backed by the green
forest, the shadowed path its open maw.

It's what I didn't tell them haunts my dreams:
in the years since, when night closes its claw
around the new moon, out in the intense
quiet of that untravelled wood, the raw
throat of the horned owl startles me to sense
the fading echo of that poor boy's screams.