1953
Summer’s over though the air still glows.
You can’t hear our shrill laughter, smell the Brylcreem
in the boys' hair, or see our shiny leather shoes.
In unswerving rows, a pack/array of nine-year-olds
gazes out of our class photo into the future.
We don't know that the straight
path on which we'll set off into adulthood
will be skewed by a sheer of wind,
that fifty years will pass between two breaths.
We'll look down and see we're wearing nylon Nikes.
But in 1953/as children in the schoolyard, we look at a sky
that is blue and cloudless, at a sun that will last
forever. We smile into a channel of endless
brilliance, unaware that half a century later
someone will look back at us with sadness
for the smudges that obscured the light,
with regret for who we became
and who we didn't. We'll lament the loss
of choices replaced by outcomes
already curled up inside us
like muscles fibers ready to swell
and prepare/strengthen our legs for the journey.
The child I once was looks forward
with guileless eyes. His unfolding bones
don't yet ache from what lies ahead.
He doesn't know that his new shoes
will scuff in the schoolyard/on the sidewalk,
reek of Shinola, that his heel will blister
where the stiffness rubs,
that it will fester for months.
He doesn't yet suspect dusk will breach
his skin and enter him, bringing with it
an array of chaste faces, voices
vanishing in the wind, and wing-tips
glinting in the diminishing light.
Ruth,
ReplyDeleteAn interesting idea for a poem here. There isn't a lot of action in the present, but it still works because the imagined action of what is going on in the past. I like the idea of regret for who we became and who we didn't.
What confuses me about the poem is the late entering male character. Is he the one staring at the picture? What is the significance of the stuffed shoes? I like the idea that this person is looking back at his young self and thinking about all the bad things he doesn't know is going to happen, but is a pair of scuffed shoes the worst of it? Wouldn't he be thinking about the hardest times of his life?
your questions: strengthen works with swell to create alliteration, and it has a clearer meaning for the action being described.
I don't understand what this character doesn't suspect in the last stanza. How can dusk bring chaste faces with it thought an open sore? I would say clarify what you are working toward with that image, and eliminate the gerunds whenever possible.
I like pack (that's a nice image for children) and 1953 because it is shorter. These are merely personal preference.
Thanks Ruth! Keep writing!