(1957)
I’d fire arrows and BBs at it
by the score, never thinking what
target they finally found.
What is the moon? I kept asking.
God’s shield? The Devil’s mirror?
It’s not the perfect blister on a black foot
or the green cheese my grandfather grinned
about. In the flat earth of my youth, I believed
only in the plain, not in books.
Trust was straight and close cropped
like my hair. Why couldn’t I hit
the crescent, hanging like a banana,
with my .22? The ammo box read,
Range: one mile. How far could it be?
I was ten by Halloween that year
it hung orange as a pumpkin overhead,
God’s trick-or-treat mask. I aimed up
and up with the 12 gauge from my uncle’s
closet and waited for the wind to die down.
No fluttering leaves in the line of fire.
With the gun butt snug against my shoulder,
I squinted at the shadow of the nose
and squeezed the trigger as I’d been shown.
Light spread over the barrel, each pellet
burned into the sky. Shot sprayed
down round me again, like…spit,
from how far?
