Joshua a Man at Fourteen,
Six feet tall he Leans Swift and Sure.
Upon Hair like the Sun,
Morning Rays Strike,
Igniting the Air
With his Crimson Verve.
The Orange Sky
Replete now Fevers
The Fiery Mane,
Burning as Cinders Hot
Against a World that
Did him so Wrong.
When his Own World
Called and Called Again
With Feverish Force
To Come and Play out Innocent’s Rite,
He looked Depression
Full in the Face
And put his Plans
On hold, Frozen in Time.
He Waits as Time Changes the
Boy into a Man,
Ready to Face a World that
Did him so Wrong
Filled in holy ritual his
Little Brother’s and
Loving Sister’s Plates.
Tied their Shoes to
Set them off to School.
Everyday Adventure
Tried With
Uncertainty to Do
What was Right
In a World that
Did him so Wrong.
Timid Hands
Of comfort Gently Laid
Upon Dad’s Shoulder:
And Both Cried
And Stared
And Sweat out the Lonely Dark.
And the Oak
And the Sapling Swayed Enduringly.
And in the Turning Winds
Ancestral Blood congealed firm as Force
Against a World that
Did Them so Wrong!
Hellish Night,
In One Twisting Year,
A Brutal Dark.
At Times to Stay
Be Shunted, and
Then to Run
He Hunted.
A Sapling Rooted
Beside an Oak
Solidly Stood,
Before a World that
Did him so Wrong.
The Winds of
Swelter and Change,
Pained Vicious
With Mocking Whispers.
But with fingered music
Pounded and plucked
He Held Onto
Youth’s Hopeful Song,
Facing a World that
Did him so Wrong.
He was the Innocent Unsung
That Became Untempered
A Surrogate Untrained
In place of motherhood Undone.
Duty that Walked and Shook
Away in Tears, discharged to
Never more do, the duty of doing,
Relegating life to lost innocence
That Weeps for the World that
Did him so Wrong!
The Poetry of Jeffrey L. H. Naylor 