Issue 15
Risk
Alan Girling
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In My Time
I look up at you, my friend, aloft and swaying in the backyard maple, bare
blue knuckles shifting pilfered ply. Higher, higher, room upon room, your
tree house rises. Unfinished always; Mads, Monopolies, discards on a floor
beneath, like you're bent on finding ways to scrape the sky before it melts
into darkness. No pauses, only pounding, and your never-known bedtime
recedes. "Until the folks notice my absence," is what you say, and I can't
bring myself to laugh.
Ah, Jimmy, what drove you up there? A stern hand, a word, a withering look?
For shining down blue like the moon, empty and bereft, is another room, one
they said was yours. But they didn't empty you -- of the pride, the fury I
hear in each hammer blow. I hear it from where I scrape the leaves below,
looking up. "Come on, Alan, take a room in Hotel Jim. It's a tight fit, a
fetal not fatal escape, and the light grows dim. If I can risk cramps,
exposure, the occasional tear, so can you."
Yes. I can. It's what I say. And climb I will, build, too, in my time. But
I'm not you, Jimmy, not now. Not today.
~Alan Girling
Alan Girling writes fiction and sometimes poetry in British Columbia,
Canada. He has new work forthcoming in Pagitica (Ontario),
Hobart and Snow Monkey. Email.
© 2004 by Alan Girling. All Rights Reserved.
© Copyright 2004 by Cayuse Press. All Rights Reserved.