Red Dust
On the steps behind the garden gate he sat,
small dark eyed boy
compact and steely as a newly minted dart
coiled in the exile of his mother’s dubious fear.
Outside others shouted, kicked unseen stones
in the red baked earth –
he watched as billows of joy drifted through the latch
until a boy chasing a soccer ball came to the gate and
waved him on - petulant, dubious, rebellion puffed his
sparrowed chest and dark eyes dancing he quickly
lifted the latch and ran onto the red rousted dust
as fuses sprang and all was glinting metallic,
a boy arm, a shower of red rock, a sneakered foot,
that soccer ball, all collateral damage,
scar on the land –
this now gone boy
once safe behind the grated gate
now mixing
with the red dust.
New Myth 5-29-12
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