kindergarten sketches

Before the flood... - tribe.net

These grade school papers,


With kindergarten sketches


And third grade book reports,


Bury the green eyed


Child, who ran


Through the woods


At will.


Who counted scrapes and scars


As victories in the long war


Against innocence.





But Autumn's maples


Blushed with red and gold


Leaves, Many years


Before the desperate fall,


Swept them naked,


Into rustling drifts.


They share this secret;


Knowledge comes with age.





The boy's skin torn


Against a sharp stick


As he leapt, headlong,


Into the sullen heap.


Bright blood spilled


on dead brown leaves.





The rite of passage:


Seven stitches on the wrist.


Even memories make me twitch.


The past has no gratitude.





This thin man,


Drawn of sticks and circles,


Smiles though the decades.


He knows who I was.





These drawings have done well


For all their years, hidden


In my Mother's boxes-


Squirreled away for cold


Seasons when a mother's


Love might be spent


Or hard to find


In the cold world.





So here is the stitch that


Holds the flesh closed.


Hides the sketches in a box,


Waits for time to take


The leaves down


From the tree,


And take


The tree down


From the hill,


And in the quiet


Cold emptiness


Show me what


I thought


the world


was then.