The Wild Child

There came no blackbird to nest in your claw-hand, Kevin, or fledge a brood strange and sun-shunned as you in the cold, cooped, dirt and straw strakes where you lay down in first abandon. Awake at cock-crow, banty lullabied, your wretched scratch of years in netted dark appalled - appals. Humanity denied is always local. All you'd come to know was taken from you - twice. They say you missed the feathery air and turned your little ears to catch the coo of pigeons on the roof. Can you despair? The pity is, you never learned to play, the mercy is, you never learned to pray.