Children Fall and We Are Alone

I had a dream I caught a falling baby from a tree

Perhaps this is the child Doris told me about

The children’s songbook, she’d said

Pages warped with time and font swirled in my jaw

My legs carry me along the edge of a park

Cruelty-clad on the streets of Chicago

Players in a game, all of you

Those around me as well as within me

Sluggish steps towards the loneliest of light

He must feel the isolation in this decaying city

Wisdom held tightly on his tongue

The Elephant, full of used furniture and hand-painted crockery

I tell him to go here, search for burnt orange

Here is that lonely light in his eyes

Here is the tree beneath which I swaddled you

Motionless, glowing, waiting, listening

Here there are fireflies in my palms

— ODH