The Woods in Concord

         Down by the oaks tonight
you might still find a musket boys
but stay lively 
for the feral cats in the underbrush. 
In the forest we carved from a still 
greater forest
there was the lesser forest
we lived in.
Have you seen the boys of means 
up at the old stone brook,
they will say 
you feel pretty narrow 
for a good boy. They will ask you
if you fall every night, 
and for what. You'll hear the story 
of three decades of winter
and worse luck for someone else's
daddy. They will sell what they got 
for free 
and give up freely
anything no one else would buy. 

Down at that tumbledown a boy
might find himself 
a black charger with wet haunches—
no, it's a tree. But mark it, 
the older ones 
whinny, playing older in a fortress 
up the canopy, 
if we'd wanted to whittle you into
a gun, we could have,
if we'd wanted to light you up, we 
could have,
if we'd wanted to strangle you here
in a crib of black twigs and moss 
in the grim dark 
behind your house, we could have.