The boy walks the derelict works
Improbability, woven in his child-eyed town,
of a time that, palms on palms, slide down
the tear-soaked walls, black with the wails
of the men blue-toiled, tattooed by grime,
hobnailing down in their ochre toil of time.
Fallen to grief the thief of time and again
the child’s eye sails away, adventure blind
in the morning sun, warming the warning
of a past laid fast, here, in the dereliction of
any meaning for any given destination.
Chiding at the scattering of bricks, and railways,
torn this way and that; the fast and the dead
of a post-industrial dereliction, unrequited, forlorn.
Dare not tread on the dread woven by this child;
rather, call lazarus come forth!
For a new way is torn in the threadbare
tapestry of woe, and lo and behold the sun,
the repository of all the gold of youth,
it’s spell is woven, its worth is done.
The boy? He is abed with his dreams,
each one hard won from a day so
derelict in it’s duty that
time slipped by unchallenged;
except by this boy, that, if you permit,
then so it seems.
