the buck the buck the buck

i drove past austin’s house the front yard

unlit for weeks since his father died

a brain tumor that festered and flexed for years—

i was at the synagogue when they played ‘forever

young’ and he didn’t even cry i couldn’t

believe how strong and skinny he looked like

a man and i loved him so deeply that moment but

couldn’t say a word to him—my brights on

whole neighborhood dark i idled by the yard

there like a statue in purple night antlers

stoic arms stretched into galaxies his eyes

dew-wet on the verge of weeping but never

and i will not say the buck was a father

how he stood lost in the yard like a man who’d forgotten

everything but where he lived how he looked at me

through the passenger window as a dad who can’t

recall his son’s friends’ names so he calls them

‘big guy’ or ‘killer’ though the buck the buck the buck

did not leave it snorted heavy the air of uncut grass

the desolation of stars spread so far apart we can’t imagine

the distance like death we can’t imagine

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BRENDAN WALSH is the winner of America Magazine’s 2020 Foley Poetry Prize and is the author of five books.