The Rhyme of Little Slights

Tall lean boy faces off against the smaller-
Grabbing his shoulders and pushing him down.
Small pink surrender, collapsing, kneeling-
Winner flashing big teeth and sucking in air.
The first boy runs off with his hot breath steaming.
The smaller boy sits on the ground in his dust
Then rises, brushes off, and turns away.
___

Marcus peels off his filthy white tank top.
His skinny black frame shakes, lips spitting
As he swears in wails of what he will do
When he catches the boy who just tagged him raw.
Kill you, your mother, and your sister, three times -
He stands still, gripping with one hand his sagging blue jeans
Other hand wiping down his ashy streaked face.
___

Andrew, always it, out, chosen last, every day-
Smacked from the start or whenever he plays-
His blue eyes turn in his rash-blotched head
As three girls jump close to taunt and then flee.
He shouts out then that he's got the plague
And says that it’s catching with one single touch.
Jumped in by jumping out he maps out a plan
To choose ‘out’ as an ‘in’ and to keep it that way.
___

Angela, fattest girl, sits red faced, puffing.
Playing no more with three girls who laugh
At her the from tire swing and pointing
And calling out slings about her big pink thighs.
She sits on the bench and watches them circle
Watching, watching, counting time, and waiting.
Would she ask for a day for her chance to ride?
___

You are a stick and I, the stone.
A child throws names that cut to the bone.
Mighty one slaps his little friends down
Points  fingers right back with nothing to own.
Rise up this morning to sweet tin rhymes,
Of Jack and Jill tumbling in cuts of time.
One child cries and a second one bleeds.
Even small seeds can grow up to be trees.

February 15, 2010

Richard

One of your photographs leans back on tripod display in the front of the church. In that picture, you wear a safari hat and stand in front of a building heavy with roof snow, before an unnamed mountain lodge cut against a stand of Douglas fir. You look on to a point beyond the picture. Your hand is raised to your brow as if in salute and a glint in your eyes hints at adventure pending, an expectation, an inside joke.

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I can remember the priest putting his hand on your shoulder before mass started. He looked over your head to the vestments that hung in the sacristy. He asked for your help. You stepped on a stool so that you could lift the fabric onto his stooped shoulders. Both of you moved in silence. I filled the cruets with water and wine until you, with a nod, signaled that mass would begin.

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Afternoon sunlight comes through wood smoked skies to warm the white painted façade of this church. I stop before going in to take my seat. In my front pocket, I have an old bit of scrawl on some note paper – a piece of a letter you wrote to me when you traveled as a boy, asking me to write you back. I have no proof that I ever did. I hear my own breathing, and watch my hands, as if from far away, fold your note, returning it to my pocket.

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If there comes a next time, made through the calculus of life after living, I want to believe that I will find a way to remember you, feel your imprint in that next life as I feel it now, and that the fact of your journey will be with me though I may not remember your name.  I reach to touch what I can't know for certain. Who am I beyond my body and does the answer to that question come in words?

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I feel the bite of a rule that says everything must go and that all even the sweetest things will be left behind. Is that the truth? Is that the truth?

February 13, 2010