Primal Fear: Abandonment

 The time was night

A soft glowing whispering kind of night

That intimated all kinds of things, that remembered and foretold

Pink-tipped clouds danced in the wind promising tomorrow's brightness

That breeze stirred the pines to quiet conversation

Just beyond us

Its own proof of its occurrence but not of its significance

A murmur in a far-off room of a darkening house

An urgent muffled cry

Of pain or sorrow or love

Or perhaps the television quietly crackling

Keeping company

The drift of a song instantly on a car radio by night

Leaving just the memory of the music, or its rumor

A question: What was that song? What was I then

As far off as it is now, and was before

And I will be before I hear it again

Far ahead on the unlit highway a bobcat laps from a slick of deer's blood

But before you reach him he's gone

And white flying things flitter like spirits in the headlights

Formidable still the sun had lost its conviction

                     Does that make you lonely or sad? 

Equal parts summer's sweetness and winter's chill was the wind's secret

Shiver and sweat

A runnel of moisture on the back of the neck

And the smoky smell of leaves curling into themselves

                     In a rusty barrel

Surrounded by a silent man and boys in hoods, hands-a-pocket

Not so much warmed as enchanted by the tumbling fire

Sending their silent thoughts upward with the wispy silent souls

of the consumed leaves, never so splendid as in their dying

Ashes and cinder, cinder and ash

Oh oh oh, my daddy gone too

And the dusk became as imprecise as the season

Quivering with a faint alien expectation

So that even the most denatured creatures pricked up their ears

Stood stonestill and sniffed at what was being carried on the air

Listened watched waited

Hidden behind gauzy curtains

The stars assumed their places

And night gently fell

Bringing coldness and a surer sign

A boy of two played in the dust with his new toy

No no Tippy he warned the whitebooted cat who spied on him

from the windowsill

You can't come out here Tippy cause I'm out front with my daddy

This is the mighty mighty backhoe he said further explaining

Look't this Daddy he cried, explaining

Mighty mighty backhoe got shovel out front and bucket in back

It scoops up the dirt . . . put it in the gravel dumptruck

Haul it away

Mean old buzz buzz can't get me

Here I are

Sweet sweet milkbreathed boy with his eyes of blue

Knees bent, crouched with a child's grace, bottom dusting

the ground of his selfmade construction site

Parched patch where no flowers grow

Cuddly and playful as a little bear cub

Across the courtyard a neaighbor woman flung open the storm and yelled

Vanessa!

The boy's head snapped to, his eyes cloudier than the sky

Something he already knew for the first time

There are sheep lost in the wilderness

And the wolves circle silently in the darkness

"Where Nessie is"

                          he asked, more concerned than she

"I don't know," said his father casually

Then, born again in the moment, life given for life taken,

settlement made on a debt:

"It's okay, Brian, don't worry, she's around"

"It's very dark," the boy had noticed

He looked around him hard and decided quickly

He picked up his things and took little determined steps to the door

"We go inside now. Cause it scare me."