Innocence
~
Little blue-eyed boy,
Snug into the family born;
Safe as a new-bought toy
Still in its box: unopened; untorn.
~
I see through his eyes, his innocence,
Knowing little - if anything at all beyond
Brother, sister, mother, father; sensing
Life - unlived, unharmed, unbound
By dark sin’s shades in its blackest light.
~
What - his age? - of innocence lost,
A look, a touch, a word, a fight,
And family’s fragile mirror, now bent by blast
To crack - a little - enough for first hurt, by biting,
Bruising a soul’s suffering centre; en-pained.
~
Yet, still, an echo of once-upon-a-lifetime’s purity,
Snakes in unvenomed creep through the adult mind
Of cold reason; portioning out life’s loves sparingly,
Grasping knuckle-hard the good that remains inside:
A small child, yet-fetused, weeping; eye-lids hard-shut.
~
Waiting, wantingly, wearysomely; will again a Mother’s warming hand
Caress their common oneness of flesh?, until in mutual cut,
Causing a child again, torn into this hurt-harbouring haunted earth,
All innocent as all innocents, we are from eternity shut;
Womb-born, earth-fallen, soiled by this dirt’s dearth
Of Man’s love; forever beyond Her sacred templed safety.
~