【by Ava Foley】

I picture you bounding
over lettuce sprouts and stones with the gangly grace
of a young buck; the muddy badges of boyhood

decorating pale linen or cheeks. You’ve got pride
because you’re prince
of this island, a prodigy

among pigs and farmed land for a summer
long passed since the singing
of crickets and the Canadian countryside had stopped.

I long to hear their songs or smell
your father’s cigars, lay witness to a mother’s silence,
and some loud-talking uncle saying,

“talk of dirt comin.” I want to know which of your lines
come from laughter,
and which from labor, or the labor of loving.

“Leo of Green Gables,” I ache to hold the book
of your childhood, and the boy that broke
his collarbone climbing the old tree.

He’s still brave, this boy, whispering his dreams
with cupped hands like butterfly wings into my ear,
And they are beautiful.

I picture you bounding
in breathless ease,
because I bleed for the boy you were.