Hide and Seek

Remember when we were children,

We loved to play hide and seek

And you were more industrious than the burrowing mice,

You sought places in the depths of the earth;

I would sometimes wonder if you were

Being called by forgotten faces,

Could you smell so well their scent in digested bones?

Now blood, vessels and tissues of the promising worm

That wriggles in the bowels of the earth,

Searching or imagining or desiring a forgotten sight;

For I could never find you

Until I gave up and called out your name,

That sounded so shrill as if it were a whistle to the absent,

Might it have pierced the slumbers of the dead

And blotted blank dreams with jets of blue or black?

For the winter branches on the tree shivered

And a crow perched upon it

Made a dive for the worm that surfaced,

Then you appeared with a mischievous glee

And I ran across to you

To hear from you the places you had been,

And we both looked across and thought we saw

An eyesight wriggle in the eyes of the crow

Until a merciless catapult shot

From the neighbouring boys

Had it grounded and we saw in shame

They sing joyous songs over their prize

Of a roast perhaps,
To, did they know were ancestral scents?

august 2007