Being young

He wrote a poem about a dog. I
thought it was stupid at the time. It rhymed and
used an arsenal of adjectives to describe
wrinkles and bad skin,
lost teeth,
stink that stayed on after five washings.
He gave me a story about why humans
ceased to matter. He went to the mountains
to study goats. I thought him mad.
One time, I caught him climbing a tree in my yard. He
was seventeen and had not
seen a girl naked. It was his dog
gave him up, bored under the canopy.
When I asked him to come down, he pretended he
had spotted an eagle. Later
I wrote a poem about an eagle. It did not
rhyme. I knew the lines by heart.
It has since escaped.