Perhaps the Ultimate Question

The hinge on the porch door
has not kissed its frame for years.
Through the wheat-field
lawn, a disheveled cart rots slow,
filled with fence posts and broken trim.

Shattered glass and rusty nails creep like night spiders
in the packed dirt and puddle driveway,
which leads a quarter mile north
of the mottled white of the windowless
barn, held together
by hope and pigeon shit.

He loves this place,
loves it for its open sky
where the stars don't hide behind lampposts.
He loves it because he can
be a boy for hours and not
get scolded for running
barefoot through the hay-yard,
where he stops a moment to stare
at the ground
and says,
"Uncle where are my feet?"

I look down at the tangled
green web that wraps
near his ankles.
His round face is half wonder,
half mirth.

He knows his feet are still attached.
He is asking about another part
of him, that part which he often loses
hold of, floating slowly
above country roads between
the pristine suburban lawns
of his mother's
and here,
the neglected farm and rusting swing.

Last October, he asked me
where the birds were going.
I watched the geese honking over our heads;
I said, "Birds are smart,
they fly south before winter."

When I saw him again,
he stood on a south-facing chair at the kitchen window,
a pile of old long-necked sweaters beside him.
He said to me, "I hope they come back."

His teeth are perfect;
when he smiles, the sharp thin scar on his chin fades,
and I can forget that when learning to walk,
four stitches taught him how not to fall down.
He runs to me, giggling,
wraps his monkey arms
thoroughly around my thighs.
He is asking me about the birds,
about when he will have to choose
whether to face the swirling storms of winter
or himself fly south.