The Life Show

Camp

    On that first day,

a dreary-skied dawn, it was you who

    woke me: valley fresh with mist-pure breath,

skin coppered heavier than autumn falls, hair both

    eucalyptic and sweet-sharp tinged with green

apple scent - goring the air just as pitchforks

    splay black, fleeting on the wind - matching

mine in colour, depth, texture, you noted;

    naturally, I began to dream that you dreamt

we fit, secretly. Until the hike - when you tangled,

    as bramble, or sweetbriar? on camp berry nails

that capped the gentle fingers of some boy, him

    drawn  to your crest - he was taming your silken

skein, flying feral as we trekked. You twined

    together, his white slither through your darkness;

so across your russet shoulder he swept, claiming

    you kept. So I looked away, to rocks, gunk on

the trail, moss scaling the bark of beeches, guards

    against the bluff about which we wound. I was

beholden to the gnats, whom I could blame for

    the bites that prickled my skin, inducing tearing

as I scratched my limbs, my face, to the point

    of stinging my eyes wet - bites vexing us all alike.

But what quaked my lips through sun-fall (inscrutably,

    as the sting had left us all), I never would say.