Summer Giant

Deep, southern thunderstorms
Shook timbers when he laughed,
A tall shadow capturing all light
And creature in its path.
Determined to capture memories from day
One he swore,
From a cage released a four legged friend
Out to run toward the scared little girls
Who soon gave chase and became enamored
With the hunting hounds, grease-stained jumpsuit
And a booming voice.

To love a giant with gentle hands who delicately peeled
The Hello Kitty Band-Aids on scraped knees to heal.
After the school bus disappeared
Down dusty clouds of long, dirt roads
They raced through antique filled rooms
Looking for an auto shop store
Together picked string beans and wayward kites
From heaven dropped
The many summer days with glittering fields of wheat stalks.
There they sat on a junkyard buggie
In the amber sunset to laugh and talk…
And talk…
And talk…
And then silence.

It was where childhood memories
Numbered every grain in the acres
Where the gentle giant guarded every seed
Preciously gathered through the years
Until the dirt road disappeared into the black
Of asphalt and the wheat into steel
Where police sirens stole the chirping cicadas
And the baleful moon howls,
There little girls learned to scrape their knees
Without Band-Aids and a frown.
Missing friends appeared in lost animals
And then shot hounds
Who were buried in unknown places of imaginary yards
Never found.

With memory's fading the endless forest sprung up
For the giant guardian left alone
He reached for the north
And wandered alone for hours and days
From empty wheat yard to yard.
"Where are my wards?"
He asked.
"Who are they?"
He asked back.
In the forest
Never found.

Days turned into slow, fearful years
Of scarce golden grains
Until giant hands were too weak,
Too Forgetful,
To wonder how to play.

Finally chased tears returned
In the last gift of an old memory
For sad hearts of little girls grown up
Too late to learn grief
A giant hand that would wipe away
Tears that touched anti microbial glass
Sheltering the fragile babies would at last
See the southern thunderstorms boom its laugh
Shaking timbers and capturing
All light and creature in its path,
Then silence.