The Lost Boys
       

They'd played out the name game,
were sick to death of it.
At loose ends, woozy with too much
of the Good Life, while bittersweet
ran through the orchard,
they kept groping for each other's hand.
The choreography was off.

Sober, they got to whittling
fast. Adam was crumbling.
And L.G., with his bloated trigger finger,
was losing his touch.
She'd have to be arrowhead-keen,
else she wouldn't fly.
And she'd have to last—anything's better than clay.

In no time
she had that garden pruned.
She knew where everything was,
from the freshest litter of panther kits
to the sweetest Muscadines.

Ingenious—a Mother to tuck
them in at night, to tell them stories
beginning to end!
No need for growing up. Not ever.

***

Who could blame Eve for getting fed up?
Particularly with that infernal puppet-show
they staged day after day:
Adam, dumb as a post,
the ideal Husband,
wearing out a dog-path,
tailing her—
while LG., chuckling to himself,
dangled the strings ...
They thought they held her spellbound.

Boy, were they blind-sided
when she made use of her long-handled loppers
and Adam fell, a wreck of a man, at her feet,
and LG., unanchored,
floated higher and higher
like a hot-air balloon
and slipped from sight.

Tweet

Copyright © 2015 Ashley Mace Havird All rights reserved
from The Garden of the Fugitives
Texas Review Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission