Boy

They are nailing him into the wood
And I don’t know what to do.

I think about him dying,
The cross and the crossing,

The pelmet of his shoulder soft
Against the wood, the fingers

Limp and beautiful, a nick 
On his thumb from a thorn.

Boy, bleeding for all the songs
Of the birds pinned into his breath.

What am I trying to say? Let us go
To the crops now, and bear these feelings.