I Met A Kid Today

I met a kid today during my walk

Through a patch of trees,

Years of friendly love, familiar care

And the daily sod of cold breeze.

Here, I say, the boughs are fresh –

They smell of wood and rain;

And the gravel cracks for all of the

Regular feet that love this lane.

Walkers here are old like the terrain

I can point them by ear, lest eye.

But here was a grown up kid

New to every sense of mine.

He came to me with a query

Of what time it was?

And I told him it was late,

To home should he walk.

The boy like a shadow looked up

And told me of his wild intent

Of being held not behind the doors

With a mien dreadful and fervent.

‘Devil’s man or Satan’s plethora,

For the discontent that lingers there –

I have come to quench this thirst

That makes me cold and bare.’

‘What have these woods stolen

Into this sanity hidden in vain?

What wind does flow hold,

Tickling down my mane?

Greed, Blame and Cowardice –

Or worse artillery of Human Race,

Which heaviness has this dew rot

To disavow the manly pace?’

There he stopped his uneasy word.

My eyes went round and refused to stay,

For the desolate walks the kid did love

Had been a part of my tale to say.

Millenniums have I rotted

Standing by this lake,

Feeling my skin stiffen

In the morning’s snowy break.

I too had wandered the roads alone,

I too had found the world unfair.

I too had picked this prickly fight

And proved a bad player.

I thus warned him of the things to come

Stricken by the grief of my measures.

He, but, seemed to know a lot

Of life’s unknown treasures.