At Thomas Jefferson, five-room
elementary on the tracks’ wrong side,
one boy my age didn’t go to school.

Sometimes I saw him in his back dirt
yard, alone behind the peeling, gauze-
curtained house. His mother I never

heard or saw. His face was white as
autumn frost, hair color of thin milk,
and one ear crumpled, a tiny trumpet’s

whorled bell. A metal truck, two cars,
a dented bulldozer he pushed on sand
past high fence and schoolyard grass,

hardly looking up. Once an instant I
met his eyes, blue like mine, though
lighter, pale sky too far for any cloud.

Most days he wasn’t there and twice
I worried he’d fallen sick or maybe
died, then recalled the hours for him

were opposite, his quiet return to play
timed our retreat when recess ended,
his ending as we heard a ringing bell

and ran outside so hungrily we didn’t
think of him. That year beyond steel
poles of cyclone fence a high school

track star carried the Olympic torch
through tule fog, before the interstate
bypassed the town. “His name’s Tom

Gray,” our teacher said, “my favorite
pupil,” as upraised flame bound for
ocean and Australia sailed past wire’s

open diamond eyes and one-woman
drive-in called The Dwarf. That frail-
eared boy glimpsed no lucky runner

proudly lifting wet scarlet fire. His
hand was bare, except for toys left
to chill overcast, same as always

through sun and rain. Did the ear
that never fully grew but wilted
like a flower from late-spring cold

make out the crowd’s loud cheering
on the 99? Or hear others play Red
Rover, name of each breed shouted

until a last child’s dog was guessed,
called home? Or was it closed to all
but whispers only he could sense,

voice that spoke between the dump
truck’s hum, taxi’s urgent fare, mute
siren, a cruiser’s hushed five-pointed

star? What was his name? That rich
secret he listened to, rarest wisdom
he might have told to our good ears

before our lives shrank down, lost
sureties he’d memorized from birth
the teachers never taught in school?