Coy George

Years ago now, a teacher

became my teacher.

Took my fatherless friend and I

to the woods where an old train station

brazenly bore its scars and disuses:

remnants of a past too soon unused.

“The trenched, stone canals poured,” he’d said.

I saw them keep giving gravel to the river.

“The river is in the woods,” he wrote.

Stepping onto the stage of the globe in his mind,

high school students awkwardly stared while

I admired; he recited Hamlet from memory;

swung his arms like he used to in the boxing ring.

“The river is in the woods.”

“I can’t live like this.” My solipsism,

defined as suicidal social isolation.

“How do you manage?” I threw a lifeboat to myself.

“Everyone has to find a way,

we’re all here, aren’t we?”

“The river is in the woods.”

His boxing rings and stage presence

bled from Boston to my bones.

He slept alone, next to his dying

long-term girlfriend. He would barely meet mine.

His greatest story was self-imposed solitary.

“The river is in the woods.”

He gave without conscience

a willingness to write for a pittance.

Like the stoic canal, I will pour, pour, pour;

until my people turn me into stone

and void me of seafarers on their way to the river.

“The river is in the woods.”