by James Engelhardt
Dungeons and Dragons, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson
Tactical Studies Rules, Inc., 1974
my friends and I would play for hours
with dice and graph paper and books
but one summer midnight we left
the musty canvas surplus tent
pitched in Doug’s front yard
and walked along the rural highway
he carried a lantern
the lit circle half-blinding us on one side
and the day’s heat rolled up over us
the sweet hayfield smell rolled up over us
and the humped-up mountains
disappeared into the dark
unsettled in the briary night
we retold the tabletop adventure
talking the way boys do
until we fell silent in the weird
small hours and we walked on
beneath trees and beside small rivers
breathing air sometimes cooler
sometimes thick with flowers
and sometimes we saw eyes
burning back at us—creatures
as amazed as we were
to be alive in the deep summer night
and the road turned back
and we returned
and we were ourselves again
and then again we were not
About the Author
James Engelhardt’s poems have appeared in the North American Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, ACM: Another Chicago Magazine, Terrain.org, Painted Bride Quarterly, Fourth River, and many others. His ecopoetry manifesto is “The Language Habitat,” and his book, Bone Willows, is available from Boreal Books, an imprint of Red Hen Press. He lives in the South Carolina Upstate and is a lecturer in the English Department at Furman University.