At Seventeen

At night you can hear them
in the woods, the rustling
within the shrubbery
and trees, splashing through
the stream that ambles
slowly beneath a yellow moon.
Playing their own music.
They screech sometimes, a howl,
a cry, doing what they must do
in order to survive within this small
piece of land between homes,
and buildings, roads and highways,
concrete barriers, barbed wire fences.
The world is getting smaller
and there's no where left to go
to be themselves and let nature
take it's course, to hide what
they don't want seen at seventeen.