all that we can't leave behind

Built Our Ruins

These places are now
ruins.

Recognize though it was we
who burned them

down.

Midnight-drunk-rant-catharsis
unleashed amidst stoic stands of timber

watching,
in silent awe of our uprooting,

how we,
free to come and go,

also added unseen rings
from year to year.

Our words whittled into the wind
and not the bark at our backs.

Our frost breath
fanning the flames of
manhood-youth-gone-mad
offerings of

smoke totems to the night sky.

Those days we spent in ragged company
of one another now seem

as ephemeral as the shooting stars
that streaked unnoticed overhead

while we
built our ruins,

carrying with us the memories of
all that we can't leave behind.

For the boys,
Wes, Doug and David.