260 Childhood poems

The crowded street his playground is, a patch of blue his sky; A puddle in a vacant lot his sea where ships pass by: Poor little orphan boy of five, the city smoke and grime Taint every cooling breeze he gets throughout the summer time; And he is just as your boy is, a child who loves to play, Except that he is drawn and white and cannot get away. And he would like the open fields, for often in his dreams The angels kind bear him off to where are pleasant streams, Where he may sail a splendid boat, sometimes he flies a kite, Or romps beside a shepherd dog and shouts with all his might; But when the dawn of morning comes he wakes to find once more That what he thought were sun-kissed hills are rags upon the floor. Then through the hot and sultry day he plays at “make-pretend,” The alley is a sandy beach where all the rich folks send Their little boys and girls to play, a barrel is his boat, But, oh, the air is tifling and the dust fills up his throat; And though he tries so very hard to play, somehow it seems He never gets such wondrous joys as angels bring in dreams. Poor little orphan boy of five, except that he is pale, With sunken cheeks and hollow eyes and very wan and frail, Just like that little boy of yours, with same desire to play, Fond of the open fields and skies, he’s built the self-same way; But kept by fate and circumstance away from shady streams, His only joy comes when he sleeps and angels bring him dreams.

When we first heard from blocks away the fog truck’s blustery roar, we dropped our toys, leapt from our meals, and scrambled out the door into an evening briefly fuzzy. We yearned to be transformed— translated past confining flesh to disembodied spirit. We swarmed in thick smoke, taking human form before we blurred again, turned vague and then invisible, in temporary heaven. Freed of bodies by the fog, we laughed, we sang, we shouted. We were our voices, nothing else. Voice was all we wanted. The white clouds tumbled down our streets pursued by spellbound children who chased the most distorting clouds, ecstatic in the poison.

As a child I parleyed with animals, stuffed and real. Making my kitten pilot of a boot, I guided from one end of a string the dizzy flight and collapse. I was fearful of people as well as things, and my faithful toy shepherd with his painted face sat by me on the bed in the gloom. I was disdainful of dolls as weak people. In the favorite story I told myself my parents were made over into fair-limbed, brave angels who smiled into their god’s eyes when summoned. I was benevolent, afraid to let go of this image at night because I couldn’t hide deep enough under the covers to be overlooked by death, the angel bending over me who had been wronged. I read histories of queens, regal and barbarian, whose leopard’s eyes restrained man or wild beast. I rambled along tidal rivers and in the marshes where the green-golden grasses dazzled the sun, and felt the ache of sea-air in my lungs. I saw water spume near Atlantic cliffs. I examined lichen. I saw great light drown darkness. Then at thirteen I lay in the bleak bed before sleep and heard the pleadings and the murderous kisses; and burned, like a bear his fat, my soul. I quaked at the sound of my voice whispering,No, or turned my face to the wall and wept salt onto my knuckles. In the serene light of sun-up, before sparrows tumbled up from the earth, whispering and singing, and the exquisite sea and sky mobilized their heavy, blue currents, I was consoled. I walked through beauty without knowing why and told no one, wanting nothing else to touch me and never to move anyone in any way. I hid away from the house and learned the dark was not a dream but could show the pale gravel of a real driveway. I saw for the first time later the new moon and the full moon in one piece. I no longer feared the night, night like a bear at ease in his wide habitat. In the greatness of such space I said,This is me.

You sway like a crane to the tunes of tossed stones. I am what you made to live in from what you had: hair matted as kelp, bad schools. Oh, you will never know me. I wave and you go on playing in the clouds boys clap from erasers. I am the pebble you tossed on the chalked space and war- danced toward, one-leg two-leg, arms treading air. In this, your future, waves rechristen the sea after its tiny jeweled lives that hiss “Us Us” to the shore all day. Where’s the kid called Kateydid? the moonfaced Kewpiedoll? The excitable pouting Zookie? The somber O-Be-Joyful? Lost girl, playing hopscotch, I will do what you could. Name of father, son, ghost. Cross my heart and hope. While the sea’s jewels build shells and shells change to chalk and chalk to loam and gold wheat grows where oceans teetered.

I was four in this photograph fishing with my grandparents at a lake in Michigan. My brother squats in poison ivy. His Davy Crockett cap sits squared on his head so the raccoon tail flounces down the back of his sailor suit. My grandfather sits to the far right in a folding chair, and I know his left hand is on the tobacco in his pants pocket because I used to wrap it for him every Christmas. Grandmother's hips bulge from the brush, she's leaning into the ice chest, sun through the trees printing her dress with soft luminous paws. I am staring jealously at my brother; the day before he rode his first horse, alone. I was strapped in a basket behind my grandfather. He smelled of lemons. He's died— but I remember his hands.

Until then, every forest had wolves in it, we thought it would be fun to wear snowshoes all the time, and we could talk to water. So who is this woman with the gray breath calling out names and pointing to the little desks we will occupy for the rest of our lives?

Little Enoch learned his colors from lettered blocks (for a is the color of fleet, b is the color of war and demolition, c is the color of echo and blur, & c.) and built a bricolage: So cab was a whirring warbler. bach was the Spanish Armada crashing and crashing. And enoch he couldn’t describe. And when it reached the height of Enoch, standing, he tore whole tongues down to their colors.

I lied when Pops asked, but I’ll admit it now. I did touch the blue egg to see if, somehow, it felt as much like the sky as it looked. The egg: speckled in its twiggy nest, eye level to 8-year-olds, perfect & off-limits like the Baoding balls on Pops’ desk. We tried to find its mom, but the finches scattered when we came near. One twittered the alarm from a maple. Others balanced on wires, flapped wings at us like we were gravity. I can still see how carefully Garrett scooped the egg from the nest, then headed out to find a spot on the March concrete to drop it.I want to see if these things break into pieces or in half like on TV

the only parts of the body the same size at birth as they’ll always be. “That’s why all babies are beautiful,” Thurber used to say as he grew blind—not dark, he’d go on to explain, but floating in a pale light always, a kind of candlelit murk from a sourceless light. He needed dark to see: for a while he drew on black paper with white pastel chalk but it grew worse. Light bored into his eyes but where did it go? Into a sea of phosphenes, along the wet fuse of some dead nerve, it hid everywhere and couldn’t be found. I’ve used up three guesses, all of them right. It’s like scuba diving, going down into the black cone-tip that dives farther than I can, though I dive closer all the time.

If you stand on the corner of Mabini Street and Legazpi Avenue, wait for an orchid colored mini-bus with seven oblong doors, open the fourth door— an oscillating electric fan will be driving, tell her to proceed to the Escolta diamond district— you will pass Maneng Viray's Bar, La Isla de los Ladrones book shop, the Frederick Funston fish sauce factory, and as you turn left into Calle de Recuerdos, you will see Breton, Bataille, and Camus seated around a card table playing abecedarian dominoes— roll down your window and ask them if Mr. Florante and Miss Laura are home, if the answer is, yes, then proceed to Noli Me Tangere park and wait for a nun named Maria Clara— if the answer is,Je ne se pas!, then turn right onto the parking lot of Sikatuna's supermarket to buy a basketful of lansones fruit, then get back to Calle de Recuerdos until you reach the part that's lined with tungsten-red Juan Tamad trees, on the right will be a house with an acknowledgments page and an index, open the door and enter this page and look me in the eye.