Cruel
LIGHT
a child’s hand is laying soft at the stilt
it is resting and sunburning,
she is unmattered and ever-wastening,
he is the cruel light breather
the wood plow gleaming -
its sun: beaming
There is no thought about anyone’s softness or continuance
nothing about keeping;
no terms, long, elusive or elsewise /
just those demon tendrils swaying in the sun;
that worn out cursed greenness
infecting every line of sight
White pupils ever yielding
to a great unplaced yellow mantle
that crests above the child’s eyes
and he has no thoughts about that either /
this one’s face contorted
to provide an uneven
semblance of a
covering - a pretension,
it amounts next to
nothing
full maintaining contact
with the beams -
training for a lifetime of wickedness
he says to himself lazily, “I’ll let this field be barren”
and leaves his plow to rot
with the potatoes;
and it does.
From this rot, a deeper green than he has ever seen
lays waste to the landscape;
from this rot,
the flowers are blooming
Then, sometime later;
this rot,
the mangled garden
of a lifetime
seethes it’s anger,
pushes food up
inches below the topsoil
the newest line,
delineator of the glade,
entrance into canopy;
unenthroned
fertilizer of the seasons
marking territory - traps set
for all nutrients.
He looks to see
Daybreak,
He’s waterside;
Esther is asking him to put off another project;
“just one more decade will do” she weeps
“If you could live in your laziness
just a little longer,” she croaks
a thrush-like schiffornis,
soaking up the last sky-nightness,
screams it out over worrying hills.
suddenly he’s awake enough
stands upright
speaks his mind
and says to himself:
“May all your children be blessed by this inability.”
she responds in the dawn
“yes…” pauses, tarries, then
in a whisper,
“just as long you do not invent
a paradise.”
