Intrepid
In front of the old b-and-b, daffodils
poke their heads through the wrought-iron fence.
When we were kids, we used to poke our heads between
fence posts, too.
What is it with kids and reaching into spaces
unknown? Even seeing beyond the pickets
didn’t disabuse us of the idea that somehow,
sticking your head through made it
different. That you could know something
with your body on one side of the balusters
and your noggin on the other side
that you couldn’t know otherwise.
And once in a while, someone would get stuck, right?
Remember that? Remember how red
that kid’s ears would get as he gave it
just one more try to get free, screwing up his face
against the rub-burn and bruising before
giving in to the inevitable?
And you know what really kills me?
How many things we did like that,
how many places we went in without looking,
or looking, but just not believing our eyes,
despite our fathers’ warnings
never to reach blindly into the hedge
where the blackberry vines grew,
where the snakes love the berries, too.
***
This poem is the tenth (yikes!) in my marathon of poems (plus 3.8) for Tupelo Press’s cool fundraising project 30/30. You can view the poems I and the other “runners” submit every day during the month of March, at
http://tupelopress.wordpress.com/3030-project/.
Please follow our work, and if you find it even the slightest bit entertaining, engaging, thought-provoking, or just generally worthy, donate to Tupelo Press, an independent literary publisher. Sponsor me by entering T. Thibodeaux Baar in the “in honor of” line on the donation form, which you can find here:
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