Seven
It was almost dark
he hadn't come home
a boy of seven
or was it seven o'clock
time to come home
to the feral mother
licking her whiskers
dreaming her quirks,
to the kinked place with no cover
to laughter and danger
singing and strangers
to anger and pain
pushed from within
the mollusk, the nautilus
accreting in increments
a mother of pearl'd shell.
Still she panicked there
in her seventh and safest
most current compartment
when he didn't come home;
cried at the railing
screamed at the traffic
begged each one passing
for news of her boy
have you seen my boy
my wild-smiled boy? I
opened the door
and he was gone.
Seven times seven
and seven years later
it's seven o'clock
almost dark
he hasn't come home.
9 comments:
What a sad story.. I have a feeling that time would be frozen when disaster stricks .. The last stanza, and that waiting so well described.
What a sad and heart breaking story of a mother's loss ~ Liking the play on number 7 ~
The movement between the first and second stanza is so strong--the tropes are so dominant in the first one--seven itself a kind of trope, and the nautilus, mother of pearl, feral mother--and then the second stanza is so very human and actual--the traffic--the word "scream" really comes as big hit since it feels like a real and very easy to imagine scream, somehow made more intense from the break from the tropes, and the move to the first person at the end of that stanza. The second stanza would not be "sensational" in any case, but the contrast between the first and third makes it even more dramatic, somehow, and, yes, very sad. K.
"wild-smiled'...gosh I love that. I don't think this was probably your intent, but in numerology, seven is an obstacle number, though not as bad as five. The mother here seems not quite human, and only alarmed after the fact, which makes her unreliable to say the least. The bible, that lovely collection of fairy tales, says we should forgive "seventy times seven", or an infinite number of times. it may take that for her belated concern to bring him back, but i am thinking the cops will tell her he probably ran off all on his own.
So very sad.
The repetition of seven gives it the feeling of eternity stuck in the worst time...great job
The subject of lost children will always tap into our deepest fears. Your depiction brings a dark edge to motherhood, or perhaps it is society as a whole which is guilty of negligence. Alternatively, this wild child had his own path to follow.
Every mother's nightmare. You capture the wild fright painfully well. And I especially love your use of the word, "feral."
Oh my, this breaks my heart. I don't know anything more gut wrenching than a lost child.
"dreaming her quirks" yet even a mother with quirks will panic when her child does not come home at the time he should. You captured the humanness of this so well.
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