Welcome to My life in the shadows
A TALE OF WOOD
Back in the old neighborhood
In the old wood shingled house
Where I was raised
Filling the hopper with coal
Deep down
In the dark belly of the basement,
Carrying clinkers and soot curbside
With the trash, and
There, etched in the woodwork
Lives a series of scratches father penned
Just below the kitchen archway
To show his boy how tall he had grown
When tall was what he was worth.
When the world looked so big
Framed in blue eyes
At eleven years old.
And yet there are times when I wish I could return
Too those days of Father’s scratches
In Mother’s woodwork
To see if by chance I can still remember
Just how it was
That innocence looked
At four foot five
And just an inch too
Short
To escape the advances
Of an evil scout master.
Fall 1961
uTAH jAY
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A TALE OF WOOD
A TALE OF WOOD