We used to be small, with many a great care

taking cover from comrades, waiting to give chase

Seeking the monsters of our youth

attics, closets, beds, basements

– better we find them, than they us

Rain’s worms and snow’s angels,

the business of those quarters

Feared only were the fatherly scold

the playground rebuke and the motherly palm

in a time when the doubts of giants trickled down to our crowns

like raindrops upon ants

 

Now we roam as giants

much too tall to gaze upon the insects

whom we frolicked with once upon a time

and our tears have matured

They will plunge toward our heirs, threaten to drown them

unless they learn quickly to amend

and mirror the tread of their keepers

 

From ours we fled

Two wheel commute carrying us far from our jobs

of holding no agenda, but instead faceless grudges –

then unnamed

fated to revisit in adult slumber and

despite all,

keep us from remembering what we then could not see…

were still less complicated times

 

 

Patrick Battle has been previously published in the Garland Court Review (2010) and from 2007 to 2008. He worked as a columnist and staff writer for Northern Star, Northern Illinois University’s daily print publication with a circulation of 15,000 and is currently pursuing an Associate’s degree in Journalism at Harold Washington College in Chicago, IL.

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