Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Once A Place

Once a place of water
moccasins sleeping lightly
and gators and lizards
watching quietly
beneath ramrod straight
cypress trees
and lazy
swamp ferns, swaying in the
slightest wind.

A boy of five sits on
his Christmas bike, blinking,
smiling as the camera
shutters a permanence
of time, of moment;
the boy of
five, silently plotting to
turn four wheels
into two.

The man remembers the boy,
the place, the day four wheels
became two and the boy flew
down the sidewalk
into sunlight,
past where the gators
and lizards had watched
quietly and the snakes had slept
lightly with open eyes.

8 comments:

Kelly Sauer said...

going home... beautiful!

Russell Holloway said...

Just yesterday I was talking to my wife about how in Arkansas and Kansas, the places I grew up, I would leave the house, even at 5 years of age, Saturday morning and not come back until the very late afternoon. I spent most of my time in nature.

Today, because of the world we live in, my boys cannot do that . . . sad.

Your poem made me think of that...

Maureen said...

I like in the last stanza the words ". . . and the boy flew / down the sidewalk/ into sunlight,. . ." How happier could an ending be!

I like, too, how "the man remembers the boy": care-free, full of life, "plotting" the soon-to-be get-away on two wheels. Also how the man remembers "a permanence of time" that rises from memory to story.

Lovely.

Anonymous said...

Yes, I like this part:

"A boy of five sits on / his Christmas bike, blinking, / smiling as the camera / shutters a permanence / of time, of moment; . . ."

The blinking boy (who might even have his eyes closed for the picture) and the blinking shutters on the camera freezing in permanence. I love that.

-Marshall Jones Jr.

L.L. Barkat said...

Okay, Maureen took my comment. :)

I liked...

"the day four wheels
became two and the boy flew
down the sidewalk"

Great embedded rhyme.

S. Etole said...

this works! so well ...

Anonymous said...

silently plotting...
that made me smile.

i love the whole thing.
i like how you brough in the feeling of that part of the country you were living in, and the feeling of being a child...sunlight...the whole thing!

Corinne Cunningham said...

My dad calls them gators... with his New England accent... this made me smile just remembering that.
But also feeling of pure bliss, that too makes me smile.