17 Growing up poems

II Something is taking place. Horns thrust upward from the brow. Hooves beat impatient where feet once were. My son, youth grows alarming in your face. Your innocent regard is cruelly charming to me now. You bristle where my fond hand would stir to stroke your cheek.    I do not dare. Irregular meters beat between your heart and mine. Snuffling the air you take the heat and scan the lines you take in going as if I were or were not there and overtake me. And where it seems but yesterday I spilld the wine, you too grow beastly to become a man. Peace, peace.    I’ve had enough.    What can I say when song’s demanded? —I’ve had my fill of song? My longing to sing grows full. Time’s emptied me. And where my youth was, now the Sun in you grows hot, your day is young, my place you take triumphantly.    All along it’s been for you, for this lowering of your horns in challenge. She had her will of me and will not let my struggling spirit in itself be free.

And this is what is left of youth! . . . There were two boys, who were bred up together, Shared the same bed, and fed at the same board; Each tried the other’s sport, from their first chase, Young hunters of the butterfly and bee, To when they followed the fleet hare, and tried The swiftness of the bird. They lay beside The silver trout stream, watching as the sun Played on the bubbles: shared each in the store Of either’s garden: and together read Of him, the master of the desert isle, Till a low hut, a gun, and a canoe, Bounded their wishes. Or if ever came A thought of future days, ’twas but to say That they would share each other’s lot, and do Wonders, no doubt. But this was vain: they parted With promises of long remembrance, words Whose kindness was the heart’s, and those warm tears, Hidden like shame by the young eyes which shed them, But which are thought upon in after-years As what we would give worlds to shed once more. They met again, — but different from themselves, At least what each remembered of themselves: The one proud as a soldier of his rank, And of his many battles: and the other Proud of his Indian wealth, and of the skill And toil which gathered it; each with a brow And heart alike darkened by years and care. They met with cold words, and yet colder looks: Each was changed in himself, and yet each thought The other only changed, himself the same. And coldness bred dislike, and rivalry Came like the pestilence o’er some sweet thoughts That lingered yet, healthy and beautiful, Amid dark and unkindly ones. And they, Whose boyhood had not known one jarring word, Were strangers in their age: if their eyes met, ’Twas but to look contempt, and when they spoke, Their speech was wormwood! . . . . . . And this, this is life!

And with great fear I inhabit the middle of the night What wrecks of the mind await me, what drugs to dull the senses, what little I have left, what more can be taken away? The fear of travelling, of the future without hope or buoy. I must get away from this place and see that there is no fear without me: that it is within unless it be some sudden act or calamity to land me in the hospital, a total wreck, without memory again; or worse still, behind bars. If I could just get out of the country. Some place where one can eat the lotus in peace. For in this country it is terror, poverty awaits; or am I a marked man, my life to be a lesson or experience to those young who would trod the same path, without God unless he be one of justice, to wreak vengeance on the acts committed while young under un- due influence or circumstance. Oh I have always seen my life as drama, patterned after those who met with disaster or doom. Is my mind being taken away me. I have been over the abyss before. What is that ringing in my ears that tells me all is nigh, is naught but the roaring of the winter wind. Woe to those homeless who are out on this night. Woe to those crimes committed from which we can walk away unharmed. So I turn on the light And smoke rings rise in the air. Do not think of the future; there is none. But the formula all great art is made of. Pain and suffering. Give me the strength to bear it, to enter those places where the great animals are caged. And we can live at peace by their side. A bride to the burden that no god imposes but knows we have the means to sustain its force unto the end of our days. For that is what we are made for; for that we are created. Until the dark hours are done. And we rise again in the dawn. Infinite particles of the divine sun, now worshipped in the pitches of the night.

This is my last summer before everything changes people keep saying that i'm trying to feel it i mostly feel like it's july and i have work at six

I seemed always standing before a door to which I had no key, although I knew it hid behind it a gift for me. Until one day I closed my eyes a moment, stretched then looked once more. And not surprised, I did not mind it when the hinges creaked and, smiling, Death held out his hands to me.

Why are you still seventeen and drifting like a dog after dark, dragging a shadow you’ve found? Put it back where it belongs, and that bend of river, too. That’s not the road you want, though you have it to yourself. Gone are the cars that crawl to town from the reactors, a parade of insects, metallic, fuming along the one four-lane street. The poplars of the shelterbelt lean away from the bypass that never had much to pass by but coyote and rabbitbrush. Pinpricks stabbed in a map too dark to read— I stared at stars light-years away. Listen. That hissing? Just a sprinkler damping down yesterday until it’s today. The cottonwoods shiver, or I do, every leaf rustling as if it’s the one about to tear itself, not I. Memory takes the graveyard shift.

The time of youth is to be spent But vice in it should be forfent. Pastimes there be, I nought truly, Which one may use and vice deny. And they be pleasant to God and man, Those should we covet, win who can, As feats of arms and such other Whereby activeness one may utter. Comparisons in them may lawfully be set, For thereby courage is surely out fet. Virtue it is then youth for to spend In good disports which it doth fend.

Fast breaks. Lay ups. With Mercury's Insignia on our sneakers, We outmaneuvered to footwork Of bad angels. Nothing but a hot Swish of strings like silk Ten feet out. In the roundhouse Labyrinth our bodies Created, we could almost Last forever, poised in midair Like storybook sea monsters. A high note hung there A long second. Off The rim. We'd corkscrew Up & dunk balls that exploded The skullcap of hope & good Intention. Lanky, all hands & feet...sprung rhythm. We were metaphysical when girls Cheered on the sidelines. Tangled up in a falling, Muscles were a bright motor Double-flashing to the metal hoop Nailed to our oak. When Sonny Boy's mama died He played nonstop all day, so hard Our backboard splintered. Glistening with sweat, We rolled the ball off Our fingertips. Trouble Was there slapping a blackjack Against an open palm. Dribble, drive to the inside, & glide like a sparrow hawk. Lay ups. Fast breaks. We had moves we didn't know We had. Our bodies spun On swivels of bone & faith, Through a lyric slipknot Of joy, & we knew we were Beautiful & dangerous.

The first to arrive when the sleepy-eyed coach grunts good morning and undoes the rusty lock, he starts each day facing the water alone— the shimmering skin over the cold deep end holding the calm of sunrise before his mind bellows start. He plunges in to tame the water before the water tames him back—cutting meat and treading at the Y each weekend only keeping the pounds in place. On the deck stool with his fake leg stretched before him, the coach rasps his creeds from the Navy.There’s standing tough and moving tough, he tells them.Whichever one’s tougher,that’s what you do. On the cold mornings, the slowest tries standing tough, his feet buckled in at the water’s edge and every still joint its own heady fix. When he moves, he moves to reach the finish line. The team is mired in last, not quailing from the season’s end the only victory left. All around, hungry, he eyes the greater meets: the varsity team that shreds the water twice as fast, the seniors’ cars and flaunted car keys. Is every test decided by the one before? Do the mind, the joints ever forget? He stares down the water, his body cold and primed for the tournament, finals, anything assigned.

My dolls have been put away like dead children in a chest I will carry with me when I marry. I reach under my skirt to feel a satin slip bought for this day. It is soft as the inside of my thighs. My hair has been nailed back with my mother’s black hairpins to my skull. Her hands stretched my eyes open as she twisted braids into a tight circle at the nape of my neck. I am to wash my own clothes and sheets from this day on, as if the fluids of my body were poison, as if the little trickle of blood I believe travels from my heart to the world were shameful. Is not the blood of saints and men in battle beautiful? Do Christ’s hands not bleed into your eyes from His cross? At night I hear myself growing and wake to find my hands drifting of their own will to soothe skin stretched tight over my bones, I am wound like the guts of a clock, waiting for each hour to release me.