When Jon was eight and went to the creek shaded by cottonwoods
in a distant city on the American Plain he was flooded by the miracle

of going home as the dappled light and the toads near the water and
the depressions in the ground that welcomed his bare toes reminded

his bones—though they would last a long, long time—that what would
make him a man was in the sound that comes by night or in those soft

corners of the day when the claptrap and the frittering are left behind…
he placed his palms to the surface of that drifting water and its church

came into him as it would forever onward…for what is maturation but
the swelling reverence for this home we were given by some odd divine

who chose us to be both urn and ashes and so Jon accepted his town and
pecked with the others at what we might become but always remembered

the water from which the toads and the cottonwoods and all our gods
build their beautiful echoes with gates so we can be both human and free.