Boy with Hand Grenade (inspired by Diane Arbus and Colin Wood)
One long ago warm Saturday in spring,
I was with my daughter, in the playpark,
Pushing her up in the air in a swing,
I noticed a boy, from fair faraway,
Coming directly toward me, I knew;
(Though how I knew it, I really can’t say),
It seemed he wanted to talk to me too;
Angrily, frantically, faster he came,
And no more than ten feet from where I stood,
He stopped dead, staring, and I, to my shame,
Reacted as maybe a rabbit would,
On being momentarily ensnared
By a driver’s headlights: frozen and scared.
Unwittingly, I memorised his face:
Dark eyes wide open, wide mouth shuttered tight;
He wore dungaree like shorts, held in place,
By one strap, pulled up high over a white
Short sleeve shirt, patterned by what looked to be
Black oval shapes; his thin limbs, protruding
From these briefly described garments, made me
Think of a puppet on wires, alluding
To Pinocchio, but his vacant stare
And blond hair, furthered thoughts of a cuckoo
From Midwich; an other-worldly nightmare
Child, escaped from the lab. All this flashed through
My brain in a millisecond second, no more,
As I looked at his claw-like hands, and saw…
In the left one: nothing, other than air,
In the right one: an actual hand grenade!
And this being spotted; everything there:
Swings, daughter, trees, grass, and sky, seemed to fade
And disappear, leaving me and the boy
Standing on opposite sides of the fence,
In the midst of a grey, black, and white void;
Desolate and unbearably intense.
We connected telepathically:
“Is she your daughter?” he asked in my head
Childishly and psychedelically.
I answered him not, asking him instead:
“Where are your parents? Are they with you here?”
And he angrily shouted, loud and clear:
“THEY’VE GONE AWAY!” then he held up the pin
Of the pineapple bomb, triumphantly,
Regarding me with a reasonless grin
Of intention made clear, abundantly.
He lobbed the grenade, and I, as it flew
Over the fence and into the playpark,
Saw the grass turn green and the sky light blue,
As the swing returned, completing the arc.
In a heartbeat, she was back in the air,
My baby daughter, squealing with joy,
As backwards and forwards she swung, and there
Wasn’t a trace of the hand grenade boy,
Wandering the grey, somewhere in my mind,
With colourless trees and people, behind
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