Scout Finch Still Dreams About Boo Radley
In the notch of the live oak tree
I left two clementines,
a rusted bottle cap with a green star
and a toy donkey with tall ears
poking through an old straw hat.
I wonder, did you ever get all that, Boo?
It was wrapped in a worn man’s handkerchief
like a fledgling heart tucked within restless boughs,
traded for two shining pennies and our lives
once long ago in the purple blackbird evening.
Now, whenever the hunching black dog
prowls these streets I run home to you again.
I am scratched, skin-kneed peering
over to your yard, checking to see
if you’re there behind pale whispers of leaves.
For Lethe-eyed drunks still
proselytize in the pool halls of Old Sarum;
our small town cleans house now and then, but
evil is a reliable tenant
who always settles back in
and I can picture you now
keeping watch under that tree. You look up
at the lazy clouds of Maycomb
scraping over our old house,
pale ghosts slipping past my bedroom window;
silent clouds drifting over Alabama.
You watch me, the clouds, just slip-
slipping away under
the beautiful unjust moon.
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