The alder shudders in the April winds <br />off the moon. No one is awake and yet <br />sunlight streams across <br />the hundred still beds <br />of the public wards <br />for children. At ten <br />do we truly sleep <br />in a blessed sleep <br />guarded by angels <br />and social workers? <br />Do we dream of gold <br />found in secret trunks <br />in familiar rooms? <br />Do we talk to cats <br />and dogs? I think not. <br />I think when I was <br />ten I was almost <br />an adult, slightly <br />less sentimental <br />than now and better <br />with figures. No one <br />could force me to cry, <br />nothing could convince <br />me of God's concern <br />for America <br />much less the fall of <br />a sparrow. I spit <br />into the wind, even <br />on mornings like this, <br />the air clear, the sky <br />utterly silent, <br />the fresh light flooding <br />across bed after <br />bed as though something <br />were reaching blindly -- <br />for we are blindest <br />in sunlight -- for hands <br />to take and eyelids <br />to caress and bless <br />before they open <br />to the alder gone <br />still and the winds hushed, <br />before the children <br />waken separately <br />into their childhoods.<br /><br />Philip Levine<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/in-a-light-time/
