A Toddler's Tale
While walking past a fallow field,
Along a lonely farming road,
I felt a west wind touch my face,
Which turned my eye toward a tree
Long dead amid the feral wheat.
Stalk and stem were ashen gray.
A scaffold — simple millers lath —
Was placed across the lofty limbs by children
Long before the layered asphalt
Lay upon the clay farm-road.
Farmers’ homes athwart the road,
Were wrecked and borne away in olden days.
A factory covers the foundations,
Where once was wheat, now well-trimmed turf.
Strange shrubs shake their red September leaves.
On this wise I viewed a vision,
Lived a life in time long past:
A footprint, figure, molded mark,
Made of memory, imagery, fancy.
The vision — weird — gave me a ghost.
Before I saw the phantoms of the field
I was unnerved by whispers
Tempting, coaxing, summoning,
Commanding me to come and climb
Contorted lifeless timbers of the tree.
Then, from that far-off time,
I heard the happy howls of farmers’ offspring,
Saw the bounding children as they danced,
Sported, played and squabbled swung
And scaled within the sunless shade.
I found myself among them. Young.
Younger. Now an infant, toddling,
Older kin — brothers, sisters — chased and tagged.
I laughed, ran, fell, stood, laughed and ran,
Again, again, again, again,
Till mother called her cherished children in.
Yet I waited in the wake behind,
For I fancied the scaffolding — craved the climb —
To stand where bigger brothers stood
Like lords looking upon their lands.
I gripped a rope in hand, worked upward
Along the knotted wood-road, upward
To boughs that roofed the rough-milled timber floor.
Once throned I watched the wider world,
The wheat-fields, houses, township, water-ways.
Mother called again — my name.
I faltered, slipped, tumbled, fell,
Raven-black, crack, obsidian-sharp. I lay,
Sight through sieve, sound through stream,
Far and faded, static, staring, wailing without a whisper.
Mother, groaned, rushed across the road,
Gathered her ragdoll baby in her arms.
Farmers of neighbor fields with father,
Encircled me, invoked The Father.
Physician found the broken bones, back, brain.
I blinked — was all that I could do —
The blood-roads in my brain were broken,
Wordless mouth forbore what pain,
What dulling pain, now duller, duller in my head
Was come to take me home.
Mother wept upon my chest, and prayed
The Father come and save her baby,
Pay the man-price, ransom me from death,
To no avail. Her pleadings came to rest
With gods whose works were not to life.
I saw death come, caress my hand, kiss my cheek,
Pull me peaceful from my pain-bed.
Risen, saved, and salvaged, I sailed
With her in the seas of night, to stars
Beyond the forms of thought, into the light.
When I awoke from vision’s sight
I was the man I think I am,
Walking past a fallow field.
Walking past a fallow field.
A west wind touched my weathered face
Which turned my eye toward the tree long dead.