Childhood

a poem by Roger B Rueda

The child opens the world in the first dawning of hope
with his eyes -  what a carefree
generosity, what a grace
in the world reveals
from the even’s dream work.
A blessed dozing over cornflakes.
The quietness of the house
breathing in its slumber.
A parent’s egg lumps on a serving dish,
a pierced roll-up in the middle.
Then the clothes, the bus,
the viscous hours of school.
The black and white timepiece
on the wall was like
an operating theatre’s,
like an egress ticking open
to the frightened inconsolable
world of adults.
How the turbulent depths inside the child
begin their slow fading.
A white crust, a silt stops up
the blood. A tree aflame
with talking leaves.
This droning rhetoric
of the dead. Ooh child,
inside his pit of light,
how with a puppet’s uneven walk
he mounts the bus at the end of day.
He steers for the harbour
of his room, the soft toys
awaiting dissertation and the night
with its disconsolate lessening magnificence.