Where is the child
Who has moved through thirty winters
Since he watched his father
Try to bowl a cricket ball
And who, by careful coaching elsewhere
Understood, that the action of his arm was wrong,
Scribing through the child’s unblemished run
Of seven faultless summers, a clumsy arc,
Which sent the ball too wide,
And called from restless slumber
A spectre of uncertain shape and size.

Where is the child
Who saw his father’s failure
Force derision from each watcher’s eye
And shared their scorn, yet was ashamed.

Where is the child
Who learned too fast
The legacy of adoration,
And impotently sent imaginings
From fevered nights to boil
Each mocking eye in blood.

Where is the child
Who felt confusion; anger,
Then, the dormant seed of virulent contempt
Germinate, strike root, grow, bud and bloom,
Finding instantly, a fallow vein
In which to flower for his father’s sake.

Where is the child?
Where is the child now?

His desolation lives between these lines.
His uncomprehending eyes plead from every word,
At each full stop he mutely tries to speak.

Just once, his hand stretched from this page
To touch my own.

©James Rainsford 2010