This boy in chains

Trapped in a time and place

Far from here and now

Waits for his rescuer

1

When they found the larder empty

They filled it with stones and bones

Placed it on a raft to sail

In the middle of the lake so deep

They toppled the chest full of crone

In black waters to obscurity and quiet gale

So that time would never whisper what it keeps

2

This boy in chains

Stands still and quiet

In a storm of decades of rage

3

Waiting on decay to raise the stench

When it reached the floor to lie on its back

A cloud rose and the disturbed sediment swirled

Into the sunlit blue her face to heaven peers

She looked upon them with sadness and dismay

As every out-stretched curl of wave did lack

To reach the shore they wrong, their path unfurled

In the cold waters summer storms Sunday still and grey

4

This boy in chains

His only friend disappeared

On a rainy night

Was left alone in the wilderness

5

The house was abandoned the door resounded hollow

The grounds were ruins of phantom laughter

The windows were empty without reflection

The only place of safe joy was now sorrow

A place where toys are now relics of yesterday’s marrow

We walked away and kept looking at reminders

To remember she told me upon my assertion

That they had vanished, no they fled from hurt and sorrow

6

This boy in chains

Was caught in a sun-filled

Dungeon pulling wings

Creatures that would take flight

7

The forest scent thick of pine and birch

Poplar and thicket with summer sun

Raising morning mist beating through the damp

The safest refuge on the highest perch

Trailed walks of solitude in open fields heated runs

In search of a phantom cemetery camp

Deep into the woods of a child’s

Imagined abandoned church

8

This boy in chains

Found a key to undo

The knotted twisted lock

In elixirs and incense of escape

9

Decades of turbulent storms from the wolf’s howl

Serenades cursed through the winds song

Tirades escaping the lips of this lover’s desperate sigh

Only want the freedom you took from a foul

Twisted dark from fate so strong

Faded forgotten into that breath that sighs

Folded neatly tucked into the dark

Scraping and cutting my bowel

10

This boy in chains

Folded and in pain

No one clued in

To this twisted lock