Wednesday, April 22, 2015

PAD - Day 22- Nature Poem - Nature Boy




Nature Boy*
“There was a boy
A very strange enchanted boy”
My father sang to me
along with that voice
that was often-alone
time-together listening-
rich and thick cocoa and
sweet cream pouring over
us – I tiny girl with his hair
leaning on his shoulder on
that green couch – inhaling
him – his breath catching
on certain lyrics just a
whisper from a sob –
when the room chilled – 
“that strange enchanted boy”
shivers – shaved ice in veins
shimmered as he sang – 
“They say he wandered very far –
Very far, over land and sea” – 
I had seen the scar – his scar
a zipper than ran thick as my
thumb as I traced from sternum
to the breadth of his muscled back –
opened – long ago, long ago –
in some magic time
The lyrics weaved to leaving and
I moved even closer as though
if close enough – eyes squinched
shut with him –
falling with him
into the music
I would melt with him
whenever he left –
for he was leaving –
I knew of melancholy
before I learned the word –
there watching tears slip
down his cheeks -his eyes
closed in a soft sacred sort
of ecstasy at still simply being –
Singing –
one arm flung across the back
of the couch as I tiny girl – soaked
in the sadness – shivering in spine-
cold fear and yearning, yearning
reached beyond the music into a
misunderstood lyric – hearing 
“one day, a magic day –he passed away”
instead of “he passed my way” –
and so invited 
Death joined us and Mr. Cole on
that green couch in our living room
filled with melting music – as something
melted in him- and I sank closer into
the sweet cream swirl of death and love –
loss and enchantment – magic and music
“and while we spoke – Of many things,
fools and kings. This he said to me
The greatest thing you’ll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return”
that much was true – in the whisper
of the wind through each grain of sand
sweeping through this life of time –
Nature Boy plays –
on and on and on –

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