When I was a child I would lock eyes
With other kids in the back seats of station wagons
As we hurtled down freeways
Or slowrolled through clogged streets
I would lock eyes
Trying to make some kind of psychic connection
Or anticipate a future meeting where decades later
Our eyes would remember
A moment held between us
Briefly as a hummingbird’s visit
When we were young
Looking at the world from inside the safety glass of the family car
It was easy to believe in innocence then
To think that everyone else was as safe as I was
In those days before I knew about torture
About abuse and cruelty
Frequent as the autumn rain
For too many
Now I wonder what happened to them
I try to recollect those faces
Dredged images from ripped memories
Some of those eyes must have been silently shrieking
Calling out for sympathy or salvation
Locked in rolling prisons moving closer to the next indignity
While I was worried about a music lesson I hadn’t practiced for
Or inconsequential bullshit
If I could return to those moments
I wouldn’t challenge fragile eyes with directness
I would look at you obliquely and offer you my passing tears
I would applaud you for carrying on
Holding your head up
As you looked out at a world
That held more sins than miracles
David Trudel © 2013
Back Seat Windows
When I was a child I would lock eyes
With other kids in the back seats of station wagons
As we hurtled down freeways
Or slowrolled through clogged streets
I would lock eyes
Trying to make some kind of psychic connection
Or anticipate a future meeting where decades later
Our eyes would remember
A moment held between us
Briefly as a hummingbird’s visit
When we were young
Looking at the world from inside the safety glass of the family car
It was easy to believe in innocence then
To think that everyone else was as safe as I was
In those days before I knew about torture
About abuse and cruelty
Frequent as the autumn rain
For too many
Now I wonder what happened to them
I try to recollect those faces
Dredged images from ripped memories
Some of those eyes must have been silently shrieking
Calling out for sympathy or salvation
Locked in rolling prisons moving closer to the next indignity
While I was worried about a music lesson I hadn’t practiced for
Or inconsequential bullshit
If I could return to those moments
I wouldn’t challenge fragile eyes with directness
I would look at you obliquely and offer you my passing tears
I would applaud you for carrying on
Holding your head up
As you looked out at a world
That held more sins than miracles
David Trudel © 2013
Share this:
Related
Leave a comment
Filed under Poetry
Tagged as abuse, blank verse, childhood, creative writing, creativity, cruelty, domestic violence, free verse, poetry, sexual abuse, social commentary, torture