wait a bit

he sees her watching him now and again
in these last days of school, whenever some
befuddled adult opens with ‘now then,
what are you planning for the years to come?’
– the years! it hangs unspoken in a glance:
are we supposed to want to swap one set
of chains for fresh ones? fly into the dance
of Monday mornings, heart disease and debt?
better go free, she says; but he’s a sense
of place that shyly plucks him by the arm:
a strand of wire from the failing fence
on the high marches of his father’s farm.
he swears he heard it murmur ‘wait a bit’
and – while the nights are light – gives in to it.