260 Childhood poems

When the Master was calling the roll At the primary school in Collegelands, You were meant to call back Anseo And raise your hand As your name occurred. Anseo, meaning here, here and now, All present and correct, Was the first word of Irish I spoke. The last name on the ledger Belonged to Joseph Mary Plunkett Ward And was followed, as often as not, By silence, knowing looks, A nod and a wink, the Master's droll 'And where's our little Ward-of-court?' I remember the first time he came back The Master had sent him out Along the hedges To weigh up for himself and cut A stick with which he would be beaten. After a while, nothing was spoken; He would arrive as a matter of course With an ash-plant, a salley-rod. Or, finally, the hazel-wand He had whittled down to a whip-lash, Its twist of red and yellow lacquers Sanded and polished, And altogether so delicately wrought That he had engraved his initials on it. I last met Joseph Mary Plunkett Ward In a pub just over the Irish border. He was living in the open, In a secret camp On the other side of the mountain. He was fighting for Ireland, Making things happen. And he told me, Joe Ward, Of how he had risen through the ranks To Quartermaster, Commandant: How every morning at parade His volunteers would call back Anseo And raise their hands As their names occurred.

Their jeans sparkled, cut off way above the knee, and my friends and I would watch them from my porch, books of poems lost in our laps, eyes wide as tropical fish behind our glasses. Their football flashed from hand to hand, tennis shoes gripped the asphalt, sweat's spotlight on their strong backs. We would dream of hugging them, and crouch later in weird rooms, and come. Once their ball fell our way so two of them came over, hands on their hips, asking us to throw it to them, which Arthur did, badly, and they chased it back. One turned to yell, “Thanks” and we dreamed of his long teeth in our necks. We wanted them to wander over, place deep wet underarms to our lips, and then their white asses, then those loud mouths. One day one guy was very tired, didn't move fast enough, so a car hit him and he sprawled fifty feet away, sexy, but he was dead, blood like lipstick, then those great boys stood together on the sidewalk and we joined them, mixing in like one big friendship to the cops, who asked if we were, and those boys were too sad to counter. We'd known his name, Tim, and how he'd turned to thank us nicely but now he was under a sheet anonymous as God, the big boys crying, spitting words, and we stunned like intellectuals get, our high voices soft as the tinkling of a chandelier on a ceiling too high to see.

There are, of course, theories about the wide-eyed, drop-jawed fascination children have for them, about how, before he's learned his own phone number or address, a five-year-old can carry like a few small stones the Latin tonnage of those names, the prefixes and preferences for leaf or meat. My son recites the syllables I stumble over now, sets up figures as I did years ago in his prehistory. Here is the green ski slope of a brontosaur's back, there a triceratops in full gladiator gear. From the arm of a chair a pterodactyl surveys the dark primeval carpet. Each has disappeared from time to time, excavated finally from beneath a cabinet or the sofa cushions, only to be buried again among its kind in the deep toy chest, the closed lid snug as earth. The next time they're brought out to roam the living room another bone's been found somewhere, a tooth or fragment of an eggshell dusted off, brushing away some long-held notion about their life-span or intelligence, warm blood or cold. On the floor they face off as if debating the latest find, what part of which one of them has been discovered this time. Or else they stand abreast in one long row, side by scaly side, waiting to fall like dominoes, my son's tossed tennis ball a neon yellow asteroid, his shadow a dark cloud when he stands, his fervor for them cooling so slowly he can't feel it— the speed of glaciers, maybe, how one age slides into the next.

I am ten. My mother sits in a black rocking chair in the parlor and tells stories of a country school surrounded by ricefields and no roads. I stand in the kerosene light behind her, earning my allowance. A penny for each white hair I pull.

Eaglecrest, Juneau, February 24, 1989 Amelia, space-age girl at top of Sourdough makes her run with Eagle Grandpa Dick, Raven girl, balancing on space, gliding on air in Tlingit colors: black pants, turquoise jacket, yellow shoulder patches, black hair like feathers clinging to her head, face the color of red cedar. Once in a while I could even see space between her legs and skis. Diving downhill she continues side to side, slalom style, following Grandpa’s red boots. Then the two figures swoop around the corner, swishing downhill, shooshing home.

Every day in summer I'd cross the border; he'd nod, pick up the horseshoes, hand me one, triple the size of my palm, and say,You first. We'd play away the afternoon. Few words punctuated the clank of horseshoe against stake, until the fog rolled in and I'd retrace my steps home. I was five or six; he, white haired, however old that meant. One evening my father sat me down, spoke in the exaggerated tone adults adapt for children, asked if I knew who he was. Admiral Nimitz, of course, though I knew nothing of his command of the Pacific Fleet and was less impressed than if he'd landed a horseshoe. He was a calm man, a useful attribute for sending young men to their deaths. The only time I saw him upset, raccoons had invaded from their hideouts in the hills, attacked the goldfish in his pond, leaving muddy footprints as they escaped. As far as I knew, this was his only defeat.

She lost a tooth at school kept it in a tiny envelope the nurse provided specifically for this i put the envelope in a box with the others the small archive of things she's outgrown

The street i grew up on is smaller than i remember all streets are when you go back you were bigger then too you just didn't know it

First day of school she carried her backpack like it was her job now it is her job now she's doing it fine she doesn't need me for this part it's still hard

The kids still want a story even the oldest who pretends she doesn't but she stays in the doorway listening until i'm done