Traitor

In that last photo
I took of him in half-shadow,
He looks like a book jacket
From the memoirs of a great dead adventurer;
Or the face of the poster of a long-lost boy,
In black and white where he left us,
When I told him it was okay to leave
If he really couldn’t stand that town.

He turns his face away from the lens
Just so, like he’s seen a better fight,
Away from us and what we have built with killing comforts --
One day I fear I’ll lose him to Montana wildfires, to North Korean refugees,
To sabotaging mink farms and taking over highways,
To the desert, like Ambrose Bierce, and the rest of us
Will have only stories.

He leaves school forever, takes a Greyhound to a Reno payphone,
Suggests he’s going Northwest to save the redwoods,
Says he’ll call again or send a note.
I have earned that much for understanding him.

His mother, on the line in moments,
Knows me and knows her boy
Knows I stammered out a gut-lie before,
And in her voice
I hear the dreadful empty space of all those left--
Christopher McCandless you shouldn’t have,
I think,
And I tell her what I know.