260 Childhood poems

A fascicle of feathers in my hand, hand frantic and shaking, my arm holding my hand as far away from my body as possible—I am disgusted. I cannot pull out the central stalks of my wings where they protrude from between my shoulder blades, but I can strip every tuft of feathers from them to bare those cartilaginous stems as they rise from my back, stalks stripped perfectly clean so as to better tuck them along my spine, hide them, make them invisible beneath my clothing. I was so foolish then, a teenager not yet able to accept what he was. When my wings blackened, withered, and fell off, I was beyond happy. They would stay dormant sometimes as long as three months. Sadly, they always came back. In the bathroom mirror, I can see myself offering a cluster of feathers to myself, as if to say: Take this from me and I will be forever grateful. But the me that is a trick of light on glass is uncaring, offers them back immediately. If I concentrate, if I think hard on it, I can move my wings, and I practice in the bathroom mirror. But these wings cannot support my weight, cannot buoy me on even a strong gust of wind. What good are wings if you cannot fly? What good is this ridiculous secret I am asked to keep? With the feathers ripped cleanly away, I tuck the stems along my spine. I bandage them down— cloth wound under my armpits, tightly wound around my chest. I fashion myself into an ordinary boy.

We piled planks, sheets of tin, & sandbags across the creek till the bright water rose & splayed both sides, swelling into our hoorah. Our hard work brought July thrashers & fat June bugs in decades of dead leaves. Water moccasins hid in holes at the brim of the clay bank as the creek eased up pelvic bones, hips, navel, & chest, to eye level. When the boys dove into our swim hole we pumped our balled fists to fire up their rebel yells. The Jim Crow birds sang of persimmon & mayhaw after a 12-gauge shotgun sounded in the deep woods. If we ruled the day an hour the boys would call girl cousins & sisters, & they came running half-naked into a white splash, but we could outrun the sunset through sage & rabbit tobacco, born to hide each other’s alibis beneath the drowned sky.

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man, Bake me a cake, as fast as you can; Pat it, prick it, and mark it with B, Put it in the oven for baby and me.

It's noisy, noisy overhead, the birds are winging south, and every bird is opening a noisy, noisy mouth. They fill the air with loud complaint, they honk and quack and squawk— they do not feel like flying, but it's much too far to walk.

Cookies for sale! And cake! One dime! That's what it says on my cardboard sign. I pile cookies on a plate. I eat just one and then, I wait . . . I taste the cake (one tiny slice) I squeeze the lemons and stir the ice; I count and stack the paper cups . . . fresh lemonade is coming up! I count the bruises on my knee . . . won't somebody buy something, please?

In early morning when the sun is vague and birds are furious names of children float like smoke through the empty room: Ariadne, dark as seal skin Ian, fair-skinned baby Marina   Terrence   Alex   John after dinner   pulled back from talk of war and morals their names glow like light around a candle — Jack, my rampant youngest son Celia, my daughter who sings

There’s more in words than I can teach: Yet listen, Child! — I would not preach; But only give some plain directions To guide your speech and your affections. Say not you love a roasted fowl But you may love a screaming owl, And, if you can, the unwieldy toad That crawls from his secure abode Within the mossy garden wall When evening dews begin to fall, Oh! mark the beauty of his eye: What wonders in that circle lie! So clear, so bright, our fathers said He wears a jewel in his head! And when, upon some showery day, Into a path or public way A frog leaps out from bordering grass, Startling the timid as they pass, Do you observe him, and endeavour To take the intruder into favour: Learning from him to find a reason For a light heart in a dull season. And you may love him in the pool, That is for him a happy school, In which he swims as taught by nature, Fit pattern for a human creature, Glancing amid the water bright, And sending upward sparkling light. Nor blush if o’er your heart be stealing A love for things that have no feeling: The spring’s first rose by you espied, May fill your breast with joyful pride; And you may love the strawberry-flower, And love the strawberry in its bower; But when the fruit, so often praised For beauty, to your lip is raised, Say not you love the delicate treat, But like it, enjoy it, and thankfully eat. Long may you love your pensioner mouse, Though one of a tribe that torment the house: Nor dislike for her cruel sport the cat Deadly foe both of mouse and rat; Remember she follows the law of her kind, And Instinct is neither wayward nor blind. Then think of her beautiful gliding form, Her tread that would scarcely crush a worm, And her soothing song by the winter fire, Soft as the dying throb of the lyre. I would not circumscribe your love: It may soar with the Eagle and brood with the dove, May pierce the earth with the patient mole, Or track the hedgehog to his hole. Loving and liking are the solace of life, Rock the cradle of joy, smooth the death-bed of strife. You love your father and your mother, Your grown-up and your baby brother; You love your sister and your friends, And countless blessings which God sends; And while these right affections play, You live each moment of your day; They lead you on to full content, And likings fresh and innocent, That store the mind, the memory feed, And prompt to many a gentle deed: But likings come, and pass away; ’Tis love that remains till our latest day: Our heavenward guide is holy love, And will be our bliss with saints above.

The Blue Hole Summer Fair, set up and spread out like a butterfly pinned down on paper. Twin bright-lit wings, identically shaped (and fenced) and sized. This side holds the waffled-tin (and oven-hot) huts of the Home Arts Booths and Contests, the hay-sweet display-cages for the 4-H livestock, the streamer-hung display-stages where girl-beauties twirl and try for queen. There's rosette-luster (and -lusting), and the marching band wearing a hole in Sousa. And (pursed) gaggles and clutches of feather-white neighbor-women, eyeballing us like we're pig's feet in a jar. I wonder does her boy talk Chinese? You ever seen that kind of black-headed? Blue shine all in it like a crow.

In the old, scratched, cheap wood of the typing stand there is a landscape, veined, which only a child can see or the child’s older self, a poet, a woman dreaming when she should be typing the last report of the day. If this were a map, she thinks, a map laid down to memorize because she might be walking it, it shows ridge upon ridge fading into hazed desert here and there a sign of aquifers and one possible watering-hole. If this were a map it would be the map of the last age of her life, not a map of choices but a map of variations on the one great choice. It would be the map by which she could see the end of touristic choices, of distances blued and purpled by romance, by which she would recognize that poetry isn’t revolution but a way of knowing why it must come. If this cheap, mass-produced wooden stand from the Brooklyn Union Gas Co., mass-produced yet durable, being here now, is what it is yet a dream-map so obdurate, so plain, she thinks, the material and the dream can join and that is the poem and that is the late report. October/November 1987

The wind may blow the snow about, For all I care, says Jack, And I don’t mind how cold it grows, For then the ice won’t crack. Old folks may shiver all day long, But I shall never freeze; What cares a jolly boy like me For winter days like these? Far down the long snow-covered hills It is such fun to coast, So clear the road! the fastest sled There is in school I boast. The paint is pretty well worn off, But then I take the lead; A dandy sled’s a loiterer, And I go in for speed. When I go home at supper-time, Ki! but my cheeks are red! They burn and sting like anything; I’m cross until I’m fed. You ought to see the biscuit go, I am so hungry then; And old Aunt Polly says that boys Eat twice as much as men. There’s always something I can do To pass the time away; The dark comes quick in winter-time— A short and stormy day And when I give my mind to it, It’s just as father says, I almost do a man’s work now, And help him many ways. I shall be glad when I grow up And get all through with school, I’ll show them by-and-by that I Was not meant for a fool. I’ll take the crops off this old farm, I’ll do the best I can. A jolly boy like me won’t be A dolt when he’s a man. I like to hear the old horse neigh Just as I come in sight, The oxen poke me with their horns To get their hay at night. Somehow the creatures seem like friends, And like to see me come. Some fellows talk about New York, But I shall stay at home.