The Stone Boy

Patricia Hooper

PATRICIA HOOPER

           THE STONE BOY

            For my brother, 1958

                   I
Now summer has drenched drought
 to August rain. The splashing birds
scatter the tepid water. At the door,
   another child cries "Robin!" where, before
 we left this place he also flung his words
like dry crumbs to the marble fountain wrought
 from stone, the chiseled relic hard with grace.
   And we have left this place.

We lost it leaving, a yard
 that I returned to see today alone
over the fence that still attempts to hide
   the past we lived in on the other side,
 changed with the passing years. Only the stone
remains in the change of landscape to retard
 the progress prompted by the strange child's voice,
   and we have made our choice

for we lost more
 than a house on Mason Street, the dying breeze
that once blew wild. I lost my brother there
   along the years of endless summer where
 the forest yard turns tiger in the trees
and must be tamed. The child beside our door
 knows, when he robs our nest, it is for love.
   We too have shouted, "Dove!"

 to eggs that never hatched,
   or called a sparrow "Robin" as the child
 who has our house today while we are gone.
     He knows the angry forest of the lawn
   and tames the grass we also thought was wild,
 leaving the cage of shrubbery locked and thatched
   to trap the trembling lilac's cloven hoof.
     Imagining was proof.

 The child runs through our door
   to where the curtains flutter and I see
 the shadow of a half familiar face
     watching behind the fortress of the lace
   curtains that made us brave. That bravery
 was what we lost and only claimed before
   when we pretended dreams we did not doubt,
     and we looked out.

                    u
That year I remember a word
foreign and strange-'Suburbia', coming alive
in the alien yard and the unused rooms, the place
for cocktails and guests, history books and lace
where the gulls were gone, and the robins didn't arrive
in the yard. For the bird was only a bird
that lived in the leaves, a sorrow beyond all cost.
 This way we both have lost,

and have our losing still.
That year they asked him if his sister was
the one they'd chosen for the Court, revealed
at Homecoming when we rode on the field
at half-time to confetti and applause,


waving a smile from that convertible
I'd talked about for days to him alone.
  -He gave a look of stone

and tried to turn away
until, beneath the shining stadium lights,
somewhere beyond the tribute of the Band,
a girl looked up to wave a lifted hand .
and claimed him, half remembering other nights
when someone in the gym had dared to say
to mother when-by him-the game was won:
 "Is that young man your son?"

There were no answers then
just as there are no questions any more
where the trees are trees and the moon is only a moon
instead of a cracked pumpkin we soon
discarded for sailboats, nothing like days before
leaving the neighborhood forest that raged when
we tamed the dangerous leaves of a snarling past.
  We tamed ourselves the last.

And we are tame this year.
We hardly speak if we should meet at all
in the routine. He swings his high-school books
unaware of the girls that blush at his silent looks
and speak his name somewhere down the crowded hall,
trying to catch his attention when he comes near
and, when he looks, pretend that they didn't care.
 -We are the masks we wear.

                    m
Now trees are only trees,
 losing their fangs and eyes; the splashing birds
are never doves and robins as before
   when we were here. Now, at the open door,
  the strange child stares at me and has no words
just as you have no voice through days like these.
  Now I say, "Do you have a sister here who cares?"
   to a child, who stares

where other children swing
  and have our box of sand. The sparrow's nest
is robbed by other children, and the child
   who comes to view again believes the wild
  Darwinian postulate that but the best
survive, and tests the proof imagining
  as we did, trapping the imagined fur
   we touched|-How wrong we were.

Once, cutting flowers, we feared
  they'd scream at being stabbed. Now only the stone
is certain, showing the sparrows know
   where to drop down for water still, although
  the landscape changes, and the trees are grown
beyond explaining. The plans surely were made,
  but how do you tell a child who has lost a star,
  "Things are as they are."?

For only the stone endures
  and though the seasons promise to return
as every year before, we have our doubt
   when leaves fall down again and lights flash out,


 whether it is the last. This we must learn
although the child who trusts his lies is sure
 that spring comes back again. I think of how
   I know the child best now

and compensate with rain
 replenishing the fountain that we trust
though lilacs die and stars fade out of sight
   toward unknown forests that the angry night
 brings into danger, and the hinges rust
on the protecting door that braves our pain
 and leaves the fountain durable alone.
   -He changed himself to stone.