" GONE "

No more
To my door
Scraped and bleeding
From a falling
With a bicycle.

I patched and cleansed his cuts
Tho not the hurt
And sent him on his way
Always, I would send him away,

Tho now he’s gone
No more to come to my door
Bringing God knew what,
The poet man
Brought to me
Pelicans and potpourri -
His collected things
For me to see.

For no more to my door
To find him
In sun-faced anticipation
Only for me
To rain anger precipitation
And send him away
Mostly frayed
Not allowed to have stayed.

He went his way
But I’ll be damned
He came again
The very next day -

Again, I sent him
On his way,
Scolded him
Bit his ears
And in the sunlight
It could be seen
The green of his eyes
Had the glean of tears

As always, I’ll remember
Throughout each year
Moments in a lifetime lost
To assuage my fear,
Now sitting by windows,
With heart dreams and wishes
That he would appear.

No more to my door,
Leaving his silly bric-a-brac
Verse and cards
And sometimes candies -

He was just a fisher
A-chumming me?
Or, was he stick-and-stay
A little boy man
That I sent away?

For now,
I look into my future
And see a-comin’ around -
Soft and quick,
Without a sound
Those empty nights
Alone in my bed,

An older woman
Getting older
Until as an old woman
My vision of
Who was the fool?

Will come to visit
And revisit me
Alone in my self-sought history
I see he really cared for me,
Loved but me
and yet I wrought this misery

And tho sent away
Day-after-day
A little boy - his little boy,
Would come to ask
Me out to play,
Day after damn silly day -

And thinking I had won,
Sending him off
Until no more
Did he come to my door -

For some others
Saw him lost one day
And closed their doors behind him.

And so I placed this victory cup
Upon my mantle of sins and memories
And it grows dusty with the past,
As the Thornbird sings:"I’ve won at last?"

To a chorus of night time echoes
That I think I sometimes hear
As a knock upon my door,
And as an old woman
From bed I trudge along the floor
But he is never, ever standing there
Nor ever shall
For evermore.