I contemplated Responsibility
when the drunken sophomores pushed
the play structure into the bonfire
in the back field.
It was like being only a witness
to a siege, watching and wondering when
the walls would break.
Now the broken tower slumps sideways,
one foot in, with the swings resting
over the rising flames.
Rubber-black smoke drifts up
Stings the sky, and a senior shouts,
“pull it out,
turn
it the other way,
You
idiots!”
He turns to me and points. Unhinged
He turns to me and points. Unhinged
by sobriety and displacement,
I am a virtuous goon in a field of delinquents.
I push through the bystanders and skunk
smog toward the defunct flames.
I grab for a still cold cedar beam,
root my feet into the ground
and pull, remember the origins
of my blood, sinew, and bone.
Titans and siege breakers together
We twist and push, tossing away the chains
of the singed and toxic swings.
I stand back to breath and think
out loud to no one, There
is a right way
to burn a city. I walk toward the dark
back porch of the house when I hear the sirens.
Nothing is left behind but a smoldering ruin
and hurriedly discarded bottles near the shed
on the neighbors side of the fence.
I think it was maybe the devil in me
that placed such an idea into the flock,
and I contemplate responsibility.
