A Fugitive Explains by Firelight

by A Michigan Skylark

This poem is a villanelle, which means that certain lines & words repeat in a specific order. The repeated lines in italics are a variation of lines spoken by Jess in "Fugitive Road." Though Slim accepts the plight of women as "the way things are," Jess sees the inequity and is troubled by it. So much so that he's willing to sacrifice his own nascent happiness to even the score

If what he's leaving don't suit him, a man's free to strike out on his own

to be a fugitive from love, to be the arsonist of home.

It's different with a woman. She's gotta make do,

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dress in drab or dress in scarlet, as men's choices drive her to;

but a man may wear all shades of truth he tells himself are true.

If what he's leaving don't suit him, he's free to strike out on his own

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choose any point around a compass that his fancy stumbles on,

drive in stakes or draw his wages, set the saddle or be gone.

It's different with a woman, she's gotta make do.

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Some say a woman needs a man to give her purpose, thought, and view,

that she must stand where she is planted or tear her heart up by the roots

when what he's leaving don't suit him and they strike out on their own.

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I struck out hard and left her where our thinning fields were sown

with the faces of our family—blowing ash and bleaching bone.

It was different for my sister; she struck out soft instead

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with that chancy boy she married when I'd turned my back and fled.

Now she's owed a debt of happiness and with my happiness I've paid.

For whenever leaving suits me, I need no man's leave to go;

but for girls, like Francie Harper, it ain't so.