Injustice

He gave us the weapon, invented the words
so we could use them to make our way,
like a boomerang, out and back.
These words would unlock the taste
of his grilled and seasoned T-bone steaks.

He knew what he was doing:
even the longest lived flashlights
hold off the night for, at best, a week;
when chasing goblins from beneath the bed,
triple A’s cannot compete
with the white flood from a ceiling light.

He grimaced a bit, perhaps, thinking of the owl’s hoot,
and how we would slash at the dark in fear
with our tiny beams,
how the sleepy bats would shake loose from the trees.
Fear would fall over fear just as sneakers
on the run from leafy shadows always hit a root.

But he smiled again to think
more than the light, we’d miss our beds.
When the rain dampened our cheeks
and bent us down like the pine branch canopy,
we would know of roofs for the first time.
Before long we’d see
that all the walls and wires belonged to him.

As he hoped, finally, most of all, we would feel our thirst
as intensely as when we left, then how we would miss
pipes for holding inflexibly, faucets for turning,
fans that breath when you wish them to breath,
switches, dials, thermostats,
and a million other instruments of control.

When next we howled
against his unjust tyranny
he wanted us to remember
he was our taproot to the comforts
mined at great expense from the world
that was tree-bark rough and never ready-made:
the cotton sheets washed and dried,
the cool glasses of milk
held in the refrigerator’s belly with a hum.
When we could not have what we wanted,
he hoped the words might stir,
in the yet-vacant cathedrals of our memories,
a few bells like a small rejoicing:
all the same, we have more – full boxes of crayons
and a stock of fresh paper – than we need.

He invented the words like a command,
he even opened the front door: run away,
that you might know where you are going
when you return home.