Out of the Blue

Out of the Blue


But for the three of us,
the park that day was deserted.
Mom meant no harm
and said she was just kidding
when, out of the blue,
she sped off in the Buick
and left me and my little brother
stranded on the blanket
we’d spread for a picnic.
Beyond the elm-shaded acres
of Cole Park, in far West Texas,
the flat red earth
ran unobstructed for miles
in all four directions
all the way to the horizon.
Sam clutched his teddy bear
and started crying.
I stood in my white,
suspendered shorts
and watched the car
dissolve in a cloud of dust.
A few minutes later,
when she drove back,
I was still standing,
too shocked to speak or cry,
dispossessed at three of my trust,
held against her heaving chest
weightless as the husk
of a cicada.

Larry D. Thomas

(from Where Skulls Speak Wind; first published in The San Antonio Current)
Posted over on The Texas Poet