Resistant Gosling

Resistant
gosling
to
a coal sunrise
and
a shower
of chilled water
from the rain gutter.
What little task (always unknown?)
could you have missed
this time
...any
given
time.
Pinched light from
the little kitchen window.
There will
be no
breakfast
at
the dinner table.

This day.

Schoolyard in an hour.
Mean little murmuring
shoes
and
the walk
is swollen with
young wrathful
tears.

A simple request-
beyond the peril
that pounds
from the taunts
embedded in
woodchips

To Leap.

Fallen from rusted metal bars,
with breath
searing through a
fledgling
cage…

To leap!

From
cemented booties
into the
coal
blue
sundown.

Gosling,
resistant
to
safety
as you are
and have been.
This
mornings
curses
were
destroyed
in the pebbles,
in the gravel,
as you
left
with
naked
heels
and
freshly
scabbed
knees.

These
steps
have been
sympathetically
left

to
untangle.