John the Baptist

Unknowing, unknowable boy,

and me with my wheelchair clairvoyance,

I try sometimes to penetrate

the seven veils that separate

us. Your eyes are the color of something inedible.

You play the teeth, torque the locks with your

knuckles, big and precise and white;

you are a shadow preaching

within tobacco fog again. Your eyes

are the color of something inedible.

If I licked them they would taste like chlorine.

You are covered, too, in a blue tarp

that has been collecting leaves since September.

You have been collecting leaves since September.