At MacDowell

The day draws to a close and I feel the losses of boyhood, the boy who was sent away, too blind for games, too blind for school. This is why the furniture grows heavy as the light disappears. This is why the trees stand like cold giants. 

At five I sat alone in the woods. Our neighbor–a lawyer whose house was behind a stockade–went to the fields with a gun and a flock of children. He was going to display adult heroism by shooting snakes. I asked if I could come but he said my blindness would prevent it. When he was gone the children taunted me:

“You can’t come because you’re blind!”

“Yeah, you might get hurt!”

A pine cone hit me in the chest.

“Look! He didn’t even see that coming!”

“A snake might bite him!”

Then they vanished. 

Some nights in the cold I start to fly. Loneliness flows from the pines. 

I mean it.  I’m cast off and nameless.   

Author: stevekuusisto

Poet, Essayist, Blogger, Journalist, Memoirist, Disability Rights Advocate, Public Speaker, Professor, Syracuse University View all posts by stevekuusisto