Footprints
Rob McCracken 1989 (Philadelphia)
It’s the winter of ’05. Christmas Eve.
With a pillowcase full of Kudos bars
and a half-eaten birthday cake, we run.
Time escapes with us. We follow the half-
frozen creek, the winds whipping through the
trees, cracking our cheeks and burning our
banished faces.
Dawn finds us first: her sun shining
like a searchlight. Hunger, regret, fatigue
and fear quickly follow. One slow stumble-
step at a time, we argue and cry through
the thigh-high snow. Refuge comes as a small
cobble-stone bridge curved over the crooked
creek. Finding a tiny alcove below,
we pack in side-by-side and back-to-back.
Too exhausted to eat, we fall asleep:
A bunched-up bundle of lost boys. Men are
laughing in my dreams. Dogs bark. We awake
to state troopers and staff on ATVs.
Once back at the cottage, I ask a nurse
how they found us. She smiles and says that
They just followed the footprints in the snow.
About this poem
This poem describes my attempted escape from a juvenile facility many years ago.
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Written on December 10, 2018
Submitted on October 15, 2023
- 56 sec read
- 0 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | X A X X X X X X X X X X B X X X X A X X B |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 916 |
Words | 187 |
Stanzas | 21 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 |
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"Footprints" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 21 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/171390/footprints>.
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