WALDEN

by Will Dowd

Will you be a reader, a student merely,

or a seer?

—Henry David Thoreau

Seers win a trip to the school psychologist.

Tell me, son, about your alternate ending,

the one you scribbled in the margins.

Tell me about the night of first snow,

the flurry of strange footprints,

the grunt at the window sill.

Tell me about Thoreau’s white body

drifting across the night sky

at the end of a fishing line.

Tell me about the tall

reeds of downward

rushing stars.

by Will Dowd