Boy in a Garden

As you stare with all the pink
in your pink young soul and laugh
at red-winged blackbirds hopping
branch to branch, their loud crying
as if to question copper beeches,
their leaves as purple in spring
as they are in fall, you rub
stiff blue flowers and flaking stones
and find a speckled egg, cracked
and empty, and piece it together
when it breaks in your hands.
Then cradling a shriveled leaf,
you shout like someone scared
and bring it back to copper beeches,
the brittle brown leaf, about to crumble,
won’t go back to russet boughs,
it won’t go back as you reach towards
a stand of distant evergreens,
and not yet aware of a writhing bird
banging the dirt under your small feet,
you watch a feather float and rise
and wave to the noisy blackbirds
disappearing into purple sky.
 

Marcus Smith

published in Envoi;
included in manuscript The Great-Great Grandchildren of Edward Darley Boit