Olly Olly Oxen Free
The sniper who never climbed down from his tree.
The trapper who walked naked into the morning,
away from campfire, scatter of gear,
taking only the skinning knife.
The child who crouches unfound with the dustmice
and the black widow, in her secret corner
in the storm cellar
after everyone has given up the game
and gone home to dinner,
no more to shend her.
At that crossroads in Sheol
where the lonely ones meet and eat the lunch
eternity has packed for them, we met
and will always meet, our bones polished
and twined with ribbons for the occasion.
We repeat the temporal geometry
of heaving heaved off flesh
in daguerreotype afterlight
and get our glowing skeletons tangled
rolling in the elysian grass
so that we run a three legged race
towards the Mother-may-I of all creation.
Dana Pattillo, 1989
