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- 05/31/2018
- 708 Words
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Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are based on the authors' lives and experiences and may be changed to protect personal information. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
Pride Month, and other Haibun - 1. An Open Window
.
An Open Window
Haibun
Sometimes when I'm alone and working upstairs, the window at the front of the house is open, allowing me to hear things.
The June breeze of the late afternoon flaps my curtains out towards the sidewalk, and sounds drift in to me. Recently, four pre-teen boys have started spending the couple of hours before dinnertime rolling skateboards up and down the center of the quiet street. The third boy of the group, the one who's a bit on the chubby side, has an old-fashioned scooter like the type so popular now, but they were seen as hopelessly Leave It to Beaver when I was a kid and definitely out.
Their voices cry
with the effortless bellows
of being.
No thoughts have they
of the unless cares of age
or worry.
Their sounds greet my greedy ears
all unknowing or caring
of effect.
◇ ◇ ◇
Today, as I'm just settling down to begin my work, I project forward in time to what my afternoon fatigue may encounter. In that thought, my thinking goes out to touch upon one particular young man. If I'm lucky I'll hear him pass on his skateboard; hear him on his way to the train station to go to school. No leisure for him in the still hours of the morn, as he has places to go – albeit reluctantly, perhaps – but in the evening at around sunset when I hear him rumble home on the sidewalk opposite my house, the lad takes it slow. Tiredness echoes in his very wheels.
My curtains rustle
And my mornings and evenings
Are marked by the sounds
Of my neighbor boy in flight:
But, it's good to hear him home.
◇ ◇ ◇
This particular skateboard-commuter is kind too. One afternoon when I was tasked with something heavy to do on the curb, and had it fall, he happened to be passing on the other sidewalk with a buddy of his. When he saw my plight, he immediately kicked the end of his board up into his palm and ran to me, saying, "Oh, man! Let me help." He did, and it brings a smile to my face now to think of it.
For all who youth might disparage,
I say, look around in Wren-fashion
And see kids with noble carriage –
Circumspice rewards compassion.
◇ ◇ ◇
Another smile comes to my face to recall one writer's-blocked afternoon. I was here, as usual, working lat in the daylight hours, not making much progress and feeling isolated and much too much in my own head, when like Clement Moore's "moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow" I heard boyish laughter. It preceded the actual boys far ahead on the sidewalk, and as I had been pacing, working out some dilemma of abstract plot, I sauntered to the window.
Three teens appeared walking home from school. Their laughter was crystalline, carefree, and dipped their shoulders in merriment as they shared a moment of their daily life between them.
Two of them were tall and the same age: about sixteen, if I had to guess. And one of these taller boys held the hand of the third, his boyfriend who was a bit younger and shorter.
They cavorted so freely, so joyfully, it made my heart celebrate. But it made it a bit troubled too. For we old men, the what if's weigh heavily on us. What if I could have had held a boy's hand without fear as a lad; what if I could have started a normal emotional journey at that age; what if repression and dread of 'retaliation' had not been my constant companion at fifteen; but…but to have had a boyfriend instead…?
These what if's for so long ago bring tears to my eyes.
But….
How glad I am
They, those boys out in the open,
Have nothing to fear,
Or more precisely,
Give not a damn.
They have each other,
And they'll tell
The fresh, late-afternoon air,
And anyone who happens to be watching,
Life is laughter,
And life is connection,
So who gives a damn about
Anything else.
~
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15
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2
Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are based on the authors' lives and experiences and may be changed to protect personal information. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
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