The poem
only exists on your breath.
In the rise and fall of your telling.
It will be another 40 years
before I see it written in a book
...and tears come unbidden.
I a little boy
crying for a little boy blue
who tells his toys to wait for him
until the morning comes...
but being good Victorian melodrama
the little boy dies.
Still the toys wait...
for the touch of his hand
...that will never come.
In the real live boy
that I am
there isn't a dry eye
and I cry and cry the house down.
You kiss & cuddle me.
Your death
traps me in this poem
and melodrama becomes real
& I cry now
as a man
...this poem only exists
on the nearness of your breath
& I forever tell it
to your ghost.
******
This poem is interwoven into my life and I actually came to live it for real...it is made not only with words but death and grief and the memory of my lost sister's voice. It doesn't exist as a text or a page for me but only in that telling all those years ago and the ghost of that memory.
LITTLE BOY BLUE
The little toy dog is covered with dust,
But sturdy and staunch he stands;
And the little toy soldier is red with rust,
And his musket moulds in his hands,
Time was when the little toy dog was new,
And the soldier was passing fair;
And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue
Kissed them and put them there.
“Now, don’t you go till I come, ” he said,
“And don’t you make any noise! ”
So, toddling off to his trundle-bed,
He dreamt of the pretty toys;
And, as he was dreaming, an angel song
Awakened our Little Boy Blue –
Oh! The years are many, the years are long,
But the little toy friends are true!
Aye, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand,
Each in the same old place –
Awaiting the touch of a little hand,
The smile of a little face;
And they wonder, as waiting the long years
through
In the dust of that little chair,
What has become of our Little Boy Blue,
Since he kissed them and put them there.
From POEMS OF CHILDHOOD by Eugene Field