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The book The House of the World has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and is now available on Amazon.

Bedlam

I watch the little boy
become a whirlwind!
He stirs every leaf.
He snares the sun in his shadow.
He yells like a Banshee
afraid of its image.
He cries.
He laughs.
He is the storm inside a rainbow.
He never rests.
He perches on the table,
hides behind the drapes.
Then suddenly, silence settles!

He is nowhere to be seen
He has disappeared.
I look at the ceiling,
the first place he would go,
in a miraculous alchemy of physics,
sprouted wings and flown away.
But no sign of him.
Have the gypsies taken him?
Has he found the ultimate hiding place?
Was he, after all,
confusion and noise,
a figment of my imagination?
I am blind.

I am deaf.
I want to hear him shout,
to race through the room.
To pull the cloth off the table.
Then an explosion!
I hear boy noise,
deafening,
like an engine gaining speed.

I see a blur,
My heart starts racing.
Disaster is back.
The silence is broken.
I am at peace
watching his tidal wave approach,
arms outspread.
He is well,
He is happy.
Catastrophe has returned
to give Papa a hug.

Published inIndex of all Poems