The Scout

The Scout

(For the Man Who Told Me Never To Write Down His Name)

Back when I was

lost

I loved you.

I saw you as the pathfinder

alone among men known to

disarm the plaint of the frog sentinels,

and allowed to pass the trees’ seedlings

covered in their rustling beds, soundless,

walking like a snowflake over the breasts

of sleeping wrens,

sent to pull me from

the ooze and gel of the mire.

You did

but what a cost.

You lost

your beaded moccasins,

your pipe and pelts, your mule.

I lost

my pain only to see it

found in a new spot,

coming up like the weed it is

needing always to be pulled

forever.

You moved on

to another frontier of lost

but far from fallow women,

scouting out

that ever expanding horizon.

I think you walk there still, quick and

soft as the memory of a

leaf that never falls.

November 2010

  

Posted For Poetry Potluck  at Jingle's,   Monday, November 15, 2010

Image: Shotgun Hospitality, by Frederic Remington 

Source: wikimedia commons