Runs-with-Sticks (for Sevannah)

Runs-with-sticks and the Broken Man

Sunlight glints off burnished copper curls
she runs with sticks
Mother laughing, secure in her safety
Grandma scolds, “you could put an eye out!”
And I, a broken man
watch in silent delight laden
with a thousand speculations:
how can a broken man
be trusted to love your mother?
 
All summer I’ve watched, adoring
though too tightly wound within myself
—within my own head—
to do much but watch
and flinch when your voice
pierces my ears with pain
while my heart leaps with joy
seeing you joyful
running with sticks
jumping barefoot onto rocks
scraping a knee and leaping back up
to run over rocks again
finding new and bigger sticks
collecting the smooth stones
and cicada shells, though they
bring shivers to your beautiful mother
 
But now summer is gone
and too late, your mother having moved on
to be with another,
I realize that a broken man’s love
is no less safe than running with sticks
the greater danger is falling—
now, fallen and broken more,
I know that the loving was
inevitable; the falling was not,
but born of fear and tripping
on tethers from the past
terrors of future failure imagined
now become self-fulfilled prophecy.
 
Like you, runs-with-sticks,
I’m jumping up, brushing off the dust
and running into the sun.

David M Pitchford
28 September 2009