A Boy, a Bottle, a Man

A Boy, a Bottle, a Man

A blank page of six-year old innocence
sits in the bed of a pick up truck,
watching the sun retreat
in a blaze of rusted fear.
"My father will be right back,"
he says to the cop,
shuffling his boots in prairie dust,
knowing both tact and tale
of paltry scene--
binding broken nursery rhymes:
a boy, a bottle, a man.

The bar stool is an altar
and he is the lamb, prepared
for Mother's rush of angry words,
spilling from soured expectation's breath.
She knows inside how his kiss will taste--
that he will forget the gallon of milk.
That she will forgive him,
bouncing on the mattress
in the center of the night,
its wires poking through first
her clothes and then her skin.

This pendulum of hope and not
swinging like bridge
above a rising river's foam
where the shore line is
made of thick brown glass
and all the rocks are cans of beer.
"My father will be right back."
His learned tongue recites this prayer--
lying to the smart spun nickel
of a swelling moon.

by Janet I. Buck

Posted over on Ariga