49 Views of Childhood

But he was a quiet child, I was, he was never
one, such a one as would wander

into wilderness alone—untrue, he was
one to play at death as boys will.

I was small when I was small and then
I was no longer. Dolls are delicate. Legs

and arms articulate to sit them
around you and tell them stories, to have them

tell you stories tell him stories make them
up. Dress them. If an end comes

it will come the sky will remain sky
and weather will be simple, simply

where we live during it. Another version
of this world engages these little ones

around us, about our feet, small humans
who have forgotten the future who

splash happily as if weather were a cure
for childhood. We didn't, he didn't, know

better than to sulk heavily as if
I did not watch secretly gathering

clouds, gathering under them
into likely groups—action figures. Us.

It was better when birds did not
gather so forcefully, mournfully back

before ravens and crows had moved
into cities following the pioneer

pigeons—boys walked under groups
would dismally look down, boys and blackbirds

crossing Sunday paths home
back before sparrows would

so cravenly eat from our hands;
children of today know only

small wishes and crooked feet,
articulated legs and artificial voices

to cry Mama or Papa at whim, at the least
tipping of self into horizontal . . . .

They do not see the green sky
we knew then, such empty grandeur:

in silence such insolence, solitude's
reward for being good, which is part

of every eros of childhood. In all parts
of this world there are children

except in the coldest southernmost,
Antarctica as imagined goal, to gather

there his dolls, my wish, his need
for clean weather and snow

articulated weather; is there no
child to sleep on that continent?

No child's dream floated ever above
the white horizon of an ice containment

bends the bodies to its will,
makes a wish. Like birds

the bodies fit in the fist. The still
children play those little games

the birds of the air the lilies
of the field, the insolence of the whole

agon; suicide as self expression
is paradox, as is sex as self. He made

little houses for his dolls to sit
through afternoons to peer

out narrow windows and be
invisible to have things to see.

I have, he has, things to say, he has
he had things. To say he was

a boy belonging to the end
of habitation, health and happiness.

If this doll could sin she would sing
to him I would sing also, to her

it is like forsythia, logical because
the branch wavers and blossoms bloom

while wind does what wind will?
A dance is like this: to console

as to clasp these hands, touch there
in the air away from bodies

and then to angle the arms, turn
the hips and some part submerges

drowned as the doomed self would
like voodoo, dolled up and doomed—

dancing anyway ever. He could sing
and does deliberately, the child, it

follows that anguish is not me,
nor do we suffer who make those cries.

He would drown his dolls slowly
slide into agonized waters

which reflect the intricate lace
of the bridge which trembled above

them, a bridge which fell in the end
vortex shedding and resonant

oscillations, a dance the bridge did
with the air, not the words the wind

is the reason for suffering. A past
is anything's childhood is a reason

flares into mind like burning
burning which might have been

mind, a doll could have one
and could dance like anything.

Copyright © 2002 Bin Ramke All rights reserved
from Smartish Pace
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission