The boy walks the derelict works

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.