Child

June 7, 2023

SO TO SPEAK

One of the obvious problems
with growing older is the tendency
to begin using phrases you always detested
when young: “back in the day,” and it’s
equivalents maddened you in your youth
and are now a common element of your vernacular.

Worse still is the knowledge that the days
which you seem to lovingly recall
weren’t all that good as you lived them,
rendered less so, you then believed, by
your parents’ endless references
to the good old days, when you knew
that days were fixed periods, an astronomical
phenomenon, and there was nothing
the least bit good or bad about them.

But you stop and take solace that
the grimaces of your grandchildren’s faces
when you use the expression will one day,
soon enough, be given over to their use.

May 17, 2023

PIGGIES

I have to stop and wonder if
there is a parent alive who
hasn’t gently pulled on the toes
of achild too young to object
and recited “this little piggy.”
And of course most children giggle
but not for the reason the parents
suspect or hope, but at the sight
of a large person turning into
a somewhat ridiculous child.
If they could comprehend just
what was said in that always
slightly squeaky voice parents
adopted for the verse, they would
point out that they got strained peas
and peaches and such, and that
no good pig, or toe for that matter,
ever ate roast beef, for they
prefer a much sloppier meal.

May 6, 2023

HOME AGAIN

You can go home again
despite what the author said
but home won’t be home anymore
so perhaps the author was right.
It used to be a little used beltway
strangling the already small
downtown, a sunken dream of
some city planner with myopia.
Now they have filled that in
and lined it with apartments;
here an array of identical, stacked boxes,
the blocks of an eight-year-old
architect who has discovered order,
and there uneven stacks sitting askew
fashioned by the less nimble hands
of a three-year-old architect
perhaps, but all bearing the same name
Now Leasing, which I suppose would be
an interesting name if this small city
wanted to change from the name
it has had forever and a day.

May 4, 2023

UPWARD

The young child stares up into the sky
and sees in the infinite space
countless worlds take form and then die.

On the mesa coyotes cry
seeing gods in what men deface
the young child stares up into the sky

hears his ancestors’ mournful reply
in an atom’s interstitial space
countless worlds take form and then die.

Inside he sees his parents embrace
he would never think to ask them why
the young child stares up into the sky

At the edge of the sun, great planes fly
drop their payloads, return to their base
countless worlds take form and then die.

Tanks and Humvees simply mystify
as young soldiers, brothers wave goodbye
the young child stares up into the sky
countless worlds take form and then die.

First Appeared in The Globe Review, Issue 2, April 2023
https://heyzine.com/flip-book/4f02f9b80a.html

March 25, 2023

CONCEIVE OF THIS

No child, no youth
wants to imagine the moment
of his or her conception.
Now, that is the moment of personhood
in some places, a moment when
two cells become one and is
a life of its own, but it isn’t
the convergence of sperm and ovum
we avoid, but the act leading to it.
When you are an adoptee
and only later in life discover
your now dead birthparents
that moment, that scene
is a small void in your life
among larger voids you want to,
but cannot ever, seem to fill,
so it is left to your imagination
of time, place, circumstances
and ultimately action, but you ensure
that scene ends moments before conception.

February 22, 2023

OF A WOMAN

I wasn’t born a woman,
I cannot bear a child,
I cannot carry a fetus nine months
I cannot feel the morning sickness,
I cannot nurse a child once born,
I cannot cease to be who I am
because I had a child,
I cannot be raped and made pregnant,
I cannot be subject incest
making me pregnant,
I cannot go through the pains of labor,
I cannot have an emergency c-section,
But as a man
I can sit in judgment on women
I can try and control their bodies,
I can try and eliminate their choices,
I can do all of those things
but I refuse for I was born
of a woman, and I honor
her right to choose what is best
for her as I reserve the right
to choose what is best for me.

February 15, 2023

GO TO YOUR ROOM

When a petulant child
acts out badly, a parent
will send the child
to a corner, to his room,
for a “time out”
the duration of which
depends on the child’s
offense and demeanor.

What are we to do
when the child has
no parents, answers
to no one, even his adult
children, where can we,
the observers go, what
can we do except cringe
in horror knowing this
child had the keys
to unleash a nuclear
holocaust, other than pray
that his until now silent
playmates awaken and
put him in a playpen until,
if ever, he grows up.

January 28, 2023

SHEEPISH

As a child, when I
had trouble falling asleep
my mother would trot out
the ancient saw and tell me
to just count sheep.

I tried to point out
to her that we lived
in an upscale suburb
and there were no sheep
for miles for me to count.

This hardly deterred her
and she repeated her
directions, in a stronger
tone of voice that she thought
brooked no argument.

I did try counting sheep
but still couldn’t sleep
given my congestion
and sneezing from what
I learned was a wool allergy.

December 28, 2022

EGGMAN

When I was a child . . .
God, how many times have you
heard something prefaced by those
ever frightening words, not
scary themselves but what
painful story they promised.

When I was a child we had
a milkman who brought
the glass bottles twice a week,
took the empties and envelope
with his payment from the
shelf built in the wall
just for deliveries.

We also had an egg man
who’d leave a dozen eggs
in a little metal basket
on the same shelf. He
had a great mustache,
almost walrus-like, and he
may have been an eggman
but he was defnitely not a walrus,
goo goo gajoob.

October 13, 2022

A SEPTEMBER SKY

Lie back, I said to her,
just stare up that way
stare into the sky
without any clear focus.
Do you see him now,
the hunter with his bow
outstretched, the belt
cinched about his waist
locked in his eternal search
for the prey that would free him
from his nightly quest.
And there, I pointed
can you see the great bear
gamboling with her child
or there a goddess reclining
on her heavenly throne.
Now she said, that’s
not it at all, not even close,
look over there, don’t you see
a small child crying out
for her mother,
and there, two lovers
locked in an eternal embrace,
their lips barely touching,
hips pressed together
reclining as one,
and there, clear as day
a cat lying curled
as though sleeping
in the warmth of a hearth.

Publshed in As Above, So Below, Issue 9, August 2022
https://issuu.com/bethanyrivers77/docs/as_above_so_below_issue_9