Power

Back in grade school, I once heard
one boy tell another about the time
he killed a man. He’d been hunting
ducks from a bridge when one shot
missed and hit a man fishing
from his boat on the river.
We learn to tell lies long before
we learn to hear them.

I could feel the warm halo
of death on that boy from my chair.
He had stolen power from the locked
toolshed of adulthood and found
that his hands fit the grips.
When he saw his shot, he must
have raised the sights, just so.
I could not have; I wrung my useless hands.