I found a strange pine needle once,
exploring the grove near Grandma’s home,
where my brother and I had often roamed.
This needle, lying in the grove,
forged of steel, not pine nor grown,
was used in bleak festivity.
We marveled at that false pine’s glass
abdomen, crushed—its venom lately assumed
up arms, its stinger true.
We gave the needle’s man a form;
in talks, in my imaginings,
a fiend—gray-skinned, bone-thin, and gibbering.
Through thirty years this creature stalked
my steps, my sleep; I had no rest.
All my peace and all my dreams diseased.
So now, when to the grove I near,
alone in thought, I backward glance:
no more strangers, only circumstance.
I know this man, our debt to pay—
not behind,
but along the way.
(2025)
