What we learn of life as children is absorbed one way or another, and then it seeps into our being,both consciously and unconsciously as we get older. Sometimes we are aware when young of what we perceive to be wrong, not just childishly unfair but actually wrong; a small outrage to a morality we cannot define. This may, perhaps, enable us in later life to prevent its reoccurence in our own behaviour. Not pass the baton on, for if we do, what we have and what we give is a life less lived.
The Beauty of it (continued)
A six-year-old walks a line
That may or may not exist,
Always teetering on the edge
Of ordinary temptation, nothing original,
Over a safety net sensed by instinct.
The fall brings knowledge,
Something not seen from above –
Not a test you were born to fail,
Nor an impulse you could never resist –
That being caught is a kind of love.
Not being caught is not knowing.
You can spend your life falling.
It’s not much of a life –
A life less lived.
Made to stand in the hall,
And told to strip,
His fingers fumble at button and zip –
Undoing himself – his body rocks;
His mind’s seismograph has stalled,
Cannot measure, has no scale -
The piss leaking from his toy cock
Puddles shame and fear on the floor.
He bends for the strap;
Then the shock tautens his frame,
And something gives, rips, snaps …
(“Catch me!” She closes her eyes,
drops…)
Flaps raggedly in the wind,
A twist of cloth caught on a fence crossed:
Something snagged, lost, left behind -
A hole around which his life is stitched.
His daughter picks at the threads;
Sews kisses, offers insteads.
Arms and legs wrapped around tight,
She whispers in his ear, “I knew you would.”
Still he wonders if he could,
And for how long he’ll bear the weight.
But the blue blue sky is a blanket.
Isn’t that the beauty of it?
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