Five Houses Down

Five Houses Down


In a panic, the woman
at the day-care center
begged me to help her find them,
the two rowdy toddlers
who just moments before
squeezed through a rut beneath the fence
and toddled off. Their playmate
had seen them, and run to tell
the woman they had gone.
I found them five houses down,
standing beneath a tree of fruit,
some pieces of which were strewn
upon the ground. Each held his prized,
ripe apricot with both hands
as a man would a cantaloupe,
fumbling it in his palms
like a young god in training
sphering clay into a sun.


Larry D. Thomas

Posted over on the Larry D. Thomas Blog Site