Tom W. Lewis



     Fugitive

I've run out of ideas.
They're dredging the river,
but they will find nothing.
The kind of trace they look for
they can't pull up.

I climbed the fence
when nobody was looking
and now everyone's on watch,
digging around for me
in the wrong places.

"You'll never fix
  the mess you've made,"
someone says. "You should
  know better, what
  were you thinking?"

I had to get away from that,
get away from all the petty crimes.

You think, or you ignore
responsibilities and they send the State
Troopers out patrolling the streets,
helicopters hanging loud in the night
over your neighborhood, shaking
the windows, waiting on you to leave
so they can draw their bead.

Someone's bound to smoke you out.
They can wait, have all the time
in the world to trap you
in erring ways, new crimes
compounding on the old.

So I jump the back fence
and get out.

Soon they will forget
who they were looking for.







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