He’d find a way through
the long backyard fence,
then roam the neighborhood
and come home when the spirit moved,
looking for dinner and a cold drink.
I’d mend the fence, but he’d study it,
sometimes for days, always finding the flaw,
as if speculating on our human weakness,
on sin and nature’s corruption.

How coldly calculating he could be,
elevating reason to an art,
figuring the odds, finding a way out,
then coming back again and again, always
discovering the breach and walking through it,
like pure spirit leaving the body,
sloughing it off like an old coat.