Like all wars the justification shifted—
They mess up the garden, menace the chickens…
and such sharp teeth! I just don’t like them.

We were drafted into her army of neighborhood kids
to whom she read The Book of Acts. At nine
I heard axe. I didn’t know god loved blood but

what could god love more, given the text, given red suns
and our blushing gums, algae blooms and roses
pricking the hands of lovers. With tiny tomahawks, we learned

war was fun. We were John Wayne, tentacles on the octopus
of the Lord. I wanted sainthood, to turn over tables
for The Good. I wanted to be sure. I was skinny,

tubes in my ears each winter like a new plague of shame.
And later, pocks of acne, an ancient stink. We looked
for clues in palm trees, turned owl droppings for bones.

On Fridays Linda taught about Isaac, the point, she said, that the knife
never fell, that god knew what Abraham didn’t, that the red worm
of blood slinking through us is temporary and taken

with ease, and we should all be willing to march into wildness
unsure of the path back. So much of this world would see us
diminished, impaled on a credit score, shishkabobbed by fate

or falling years down dark wells. I’ve since learned about possums.
They have a sense of humor. They love their scary families.
I love my scary family. My brother, my mother, my ghost

friends. My father. I love that we never found them,
the possums, that the war just stopped. That Linda moved
finally, to Oakland, and we kept on being cowboys,

sure that what was in us was good, as we climbed
into rafters in the decayed circus of our history,
warmed by the things that live there.

*