Tread Lightly, Here Lies My Dream

(A Mother's Words)

 

He was just a lad.

He touched spider webs after rain
and cried when his puppy died.

I remember this scene, 

as I part my curtains and watch,

reluctant to gaze upon revelry.

They're all feeling gay today,

those people in the streets.

Of course, they didn't know him.

To them, he was simply

another child.

Unshared responsibility.

Someone else's dream.

 

He played games,

up and down and inside-out
and he learned to go away

and never pouted.

Brave boy, stout,

marching in another's shadow.

Stretching his full height

to fill the void,  pushing pride

to it's limits.

 

I wonder if someone might have said,

"Lad, you're a man now."
and rattled off a list of tattered cliches.

I wonder if someone might have said,

"This is how it's done.",
then showed him the way and issued his gun.

I wonder if that someone has a son.

Surely someone must have known,

as I do now, as certainly as

I still feel the pain of labour,

that he was faceless in the crowds;

slipping through rows of  booted babies.

All blood being red, after all,

who would recall? 

 

No smiling moon, sifting dreamdust

on sleeping cherub cheeks,

only another martyr

for the children's crusade.

Like home, when the lights went out

in a storm, he died in the dark.

 

I hear beyond the curtain,

voices like a stream,

the women on our street saying,

"He was such a lad!

Talking of  pranks and silly annoyances,

hadn't they already decided

he'd never amount to much anyway?

Someone else's problem.

Someone else's dream.

They've packed him away

with their linen and doilies,
swallowed him in mincing bites

along with their social teas

and apricot brandy,

buried him in their rubbish bins

with yesterdays newspapers

and hung flags in their windows,

only God knows why,

and I watch him evaporate

like steam on a window glass,

while all his little dolls weep

for my lost dream.