We’ve been making our way
down a trail choked by vines
(wild grape and greenbrier)
one season’s growth threatening to close the path.
My son, for a while yet
I’ll carry you if you’ll let me.
Already, you’ve fallen twice,
and your mittens are full of thorns.
Michael Colonnese is the author of Sex and Death, I Suppose, which he describes as a hard-boiled detective novel with a soft Jungian underbelly, of a chapbook, Temporary Agency, and of a poetry collection, Double Feature. His short fiction, creative nonfiction, essays, and poems have appeared in over sixty literary magazines and academic journals, large and small. He’s a retired university professor, and for many decades he served as the managing editor of Longleaf Press at Methodist University, where he held an endowed chair in American Literature. He currently lives in the mountains of western North Carolina, near Asheville.
