Tryst

The last time things came easily
was in the tall grass by the dock in June,
near where we used to pick raspberries
with their sour juice, little hairs, and black thorns.
Sometimes we took handfuls back home
to cut the tartness with scoops of ice cream,
but more often we couldn’t wait
and ate them standing in the tangled brush.

That night he wore his father’s jacket, hung about
until the others had gone into the house,
then tugged me down beside the canoe.
He held himself the way they do sometimes,
as though you’re something easily ruined.
I would’ve liked to be a branch, I said,
on a birch tree where nothing with petals grows
or a hollow carved deep into the trunk of the tree
with a hunting knife or tomahawk.
But these things are coarse.

CDL