Non-classifiable
Clearly, any field trip involving manure is not right for a bunch of fourteen-year-olds.
But manure wasn't even the worst part of the stupid field trip.
The worst part was that the farmer grows pigs. And pigs are also called hogs. And there's this poor guy in our class called Dan Hogg who everybody hated.
I don't know why exactly. Maybe it was his hair. Or his teeth. Or his glasses. Or the fact that he answered Mr. Benvie's questions as if he might actually have a brain. Usually he just tried to sort of disappear, but it never worked. Idiots like Shane Coolen or Tyler March wouldn't take their eyes off him. They wouldn't shut up about him. They wouldn't quit laughing at him.
leaving the pond
leaving was harder than being there;
what we have not resolved is the coming home:
where you might linger
where you might give us a sign that
you didn't mean to fade away
that you miss us, that it was all right for us to
go to Old Forge without you
that the pine trees were silently missing you too
that the mist still paused, still hung low
on the sand where you sat looking at the lake
where you wished you were, where a single boat
rowing toward you reminded you
of a skirting water spider you watched as a kid
when dusk was all the gray you'd ever known
where your passing was a mirror where we could see
ourselves dissolving, where the only reason you lived
as long as you did, was to see yourself
one more time on the face of the pond
How to Destroy a Colour
You feel it in the voice of your dying mother
who tells you spring will never be
again. She stops eating. She kills herself
always in summer, when doing so bothers you
the most, when doing so makes you question
why green was ever invented.
How to destroy a colour. This dying
is constant. This voice descends everywhere
in whispers. It withers the ferns. You
are almost glad nothing green survives.
