W Hen did the child become the man?
He thought he would spend some time alone.
He gathered up two blankets and such food

as he could find about the house, matches,
whatever, and left a simple note: I am fine.
back in five days. No search. Leaving

by way of the basement door, he took down
a sharp machete, locked the house, debouched
down the path he'd made years ago

along the creek, and, slipping through the culvert,
made his way on the quivering leaf-mold,
seldom traversed, of an alder swamp

less than a mile from his suburban home.
It was Christmas Day. She: You can't just sit
and grin like that! What if he's been kidnapped?

He: No, he's got with him the right things,
and everything I've worked to teach him, too.
He's not too far off, I'd guess, and it's time

we start to give him room. So he said,
But some precaution he did take. He had
some idea of where to go, and walked

along the highway till he came abreast
of the one place, two miles square, that had
no houses. Already there was gloom. The wind

came to him from the swamp, and on the wind
a trace of alder smoke. He nodded, and went home.
The boy worked fast, knowing the night would be

not merely freezing, but zero or at most five.
He'd picked an island, slightly higher ground,
marked by scrub oaks scrabbling to live there.

He cut poles over half an acre of swamp,
and dragged them in, shaping a low frame
of woven poles, and burying it in leaves,

two feet deep. There were no stones to line
a fire pit, but he dug muck, building up
a horseshoe shape to throw in heat

from small campfires through the open door.
Hauling the blankets in, he tried the bed,
then found it hard to rise again, but knew

it must be done. He gathered sticks and twigs,
and with a candle stub made smoke, then heat,
a little, and welcome noise of flame. With one

remaining hour of fading winter light
he walked about, finding bits of wood.
Throughout that first night, how many times

he did not next day remember, he awoke
to reach out from his tiny shelter, feed
his glowering little fire, and soon drift off

in that light sleep of a body not quite warm.
The leaves in his roof and walls were not yet dry,
and stole his heat. But this would have to do.

The swamp lay silent. Fingers of fine frost
curled from the island mud, and by the second
morning thick ice had sheeted all the pools.

The need now was for water, and he ranged
to the creek. (it was clean then;
you could not drink it now.) Here there was

black ice, but water passed beneath,
and he sought it, raining blows with his
machete. Canteen and pot both filled,

he skated through the alders to his camp,
and set about heating beans. The routine
was set: find wood, get water, eat, sleep,

and always feed the fire, by day or night.
No time for books: he had Thoreau at hand
but never opened him. No need for music:

his fire sang. There were small birds,
grey hustling blips, that came to camp
for cracker crumbs and darted out of sight,

making no sound, so far as he could hear.
The fourth night, a raccoon came strolling by
and poked its bandit face inside the hut.

Its cold nose touched his cheek, and roused him
enough to send it packing. Then he lay
looking at stars: Orion with his loyal dog

striding among the leafless, writhing branches
of the oaks. He heard ice swelling in the creek.
On New Year's Eve the youth took down his house.

He scattered poles and leaves, poured water
on his last coals, broke the dried clay walls
of the pit, buried his latrine, packed

his kitchen in his blanket roll, and hefted
the Philippine machete. Skating on the ice,
he slipped out through the culvert, hiked along

the frozen creek, and heard a familiar hammering
in the new basement he had helped to dig.
His father was there, framing a plywood form

for pouring concrete. The older man looked up
to see the young man well, but only said:
Hand me that spirit level, there. Then

they worked that day together side by side.
Elsewhere, the ice was thawing in the swamp,
and a war began in a place called Vietnam.