Here in the darkness, now grown, wet eyes,
making speeches with a marble in his palm.
In London, sitting, half-awake:
winter smoke, cruelty of water, cold teeth,
terse footsteps as dawn broke: his own.
And across the way, as if younger once,
as if always there: the weak sun rising,
a rock in the strange white sky.
He thinks of his own death, disclosed in a whisper:
I will die a memory. I will die forever.
His parents cross in the moist morning hush.
Blinking, wonderment. An ultimate cause.
In Germany, a small boy playing with sticks
acts out common noonday life.
Hills of his childhood, explosions in the forest:
no, never, not even in dreams.
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Copyright © 2005 Laura Hughes