The Stone Boy

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.