when i was younger i stuffed some clothes into a backpack and boarded a Greyhound bus with a rail pass and no particular destination.
i didn't tell anyone that i was leaving; i had no intention of returning – i wanted to disappear.
as the bus carried me across Canada it stopped in many small prairie towns where i'd light a cigarette in front of shop windows and study faces on missing person posters.
once i recognized one of the faces – it was the photo of a young man that worked as a cashier in a gas station in one of the small towns in which we'd stopped.
the man was neither missing nor dead nor in any kind of distress whatsoever – in fact he appeared happy and healthy – apparently the only foul play involved was his own desire to go missing in Canada. here is a man much like myself, i thought, as i entered the shop and put the poster inside my backpack.
i found out two months later that my ex-girlfriend was pregnant – so not wanting to be like my own deadbeat father i jumped on a bus to take me back home into the city of my birth.
as i passed again through that small prairie town i entered the gas station, handed the poster to the young man behind the register and smiled – it's too late for me man, i said, but for what it's worth i hope they never fucking find you.
"Wolf Carstens' poetry reads like cries from the void. He is the master at uncovering old scars and turning them into the raw poetry of all the dark fathers and the primal dreams." - Todd Moore
