A Brief Childhood

In the back of my head, in the garden shed, I see him as clearly as fresh white paint: A little boy sat on the creosote floor, Dragged grazed knees hugged up to his chin, So familiar, so resonant and never faint. He shivers and weeps on the wooden ground, Alone, almost silent, with hardly a sound, In retreat from a world he cannot understand That Is ruled and defined by a callused hand. It's his seventh birthday and a slowing flood Of mucus and blood flows from swollen lips, A tooth bares a nerve and a jagged chip, But the pain means no more than dandelion clocks Or cuckoo spit; the act alone the gestalt of it. Some days he would walk for miles, To see beyond the next hill, around the bend, Kicking slowly along, his shadow twice his size, Dwarfing him, tracking him, a passive friend. Perhaps to find some haven, someone to Take him in, rescue his heart, and want him; But strangers, though kindly, approached With the dusk and it always ended the same way: "Where do you live?" they would say And thoroughly drilled, he would quietly reply, In emotion drained monotone, His address and number of the telephone, And they always took him back home. Some days he would walk for miles, To sit on the edge of the viaduct, Perched perilously with nothing to lose, Dangling feet in small scuffed shoes, Dropping pebbles and stones to the Rocks and undergrowth far, far below, Imagining if he may fall in their stead, What then would be left to know? The fall down the stairs snapped his ankle Like a spindly twig, fractured some ribs, Dislocated his jaw. The children's ward, antiseptic and bright, Young nurses in uniform, starched and white Were so kind to him, he almost cried, bringing concern And orange squash and a paper straw. Sometimes it’s like this when things go wrong, A scapegoat is needed to blame things on. People thought him shy, with head bowed low, Lost in comics and books, lost in himself, Denying the threat of another blow. He was not shy, just hiding and biding, Keeping his head down and trying not to show. Life is a scoundrel, and time a cohort thief, Stealing a childhood with no reprieve, Leaving only the slow burning sense of relief, That an unpleasant childhood seemed mercifully brief.