Scared

by Elizabeth Gordon McKim

for Etheridge Knight

Till the last breath
and that kept you moving
through the dance and de /cadence of America
’cause you were too desperately scared
to stop even on those last days on earth
when you said I desperately need
to shit or when you were sixteen
and you desperately needed to get away from Paducah
so you joined the army or when you were dying
and your morphine and dilaudid pills were stolen more than once
and you were desperate there would never be enough
to take away the pain and you were scared and scarred
and running since the early days
laying up in the jailhouse with a man who murdered
his wife cut off her head and you still a boy
put in jail for stealing a radio in Illinois
with Baby Cisco and Ed Mac / Donald
scared and scared
now I’m up here sitting
by the St. George River Maine
watching the blue heron stand on one leg
and listening to the birch leaves twitter
and I think of thee and me
and I fall asleep into a basket of stars and meteor showers
and I wake into a bucket of blue
I turn this way and that minding the breeze
And watching the little bitty brown moth shudder
At my window today I saw its shadow cross my book
I love you
more than I can say
I’m sitting and staring for the two of us