Dear John Berryman – David Crews
I am the little boy who cries wolf.
I am the man who cannot stop
the boy from speaking. From telling others
he knows best, that there is a baby bird
trapped deep in his chest, and it must fly
you see. That little boy is a dying man
and so he hears only violence—no matter
the cost. He has come to collect his things
and wants to go home. Somewhere
deep in the woods where foxes roam
and mustelids sometimes lurk the streambed
and the ferns with their fractals of light.
Just so you know, he plans to leave you
on the bookshelf. (Mayakovsky too.)
Nothing personal, it’s just survival.
We all mean to live one way or another—
be it the man who blames other men
be it the man who forgives his self.
David Crews (davidcrewspoetry.com) is author of Wander-Thrush: Lyric Essays of the Adirondacks (Ra Press, 2018) and High Peaks (Ra Press, 2015)—poems that catalog his hiking of the “Adirondack 46ers” in upstate New York. New work can be found in Rewilding Earth, The Stillwater Review, Porcupine Lit, and The HOPPER.