Lost Boys
Digging through the creative vaults, here’s a poem I wrote some years ago when my son was still a wild teenager.
LOST BOYS
After ‘Thin Black Line’[1]
My son has snow gum sapling limbs.A year ago he was wild as a feral cat.Prowling. Raging. Trying to grow into his manhoodin a culture empty of ceremony. His woundedeyes flashed at me—single-mother: You can’t show me how to be a man,
what use are you?He and his trouble-maker mates elected themselves uncrowned kings of the town, played at being tearaways,the way only white kids can do— knowing they’re safe,when it counts. Son, you got a scare, didn’t you?You smacked into a brick shithouseof a man, in uniform.You scratched & struggled & broke freeto join the other boys, discarding the stolen champagne, blood pumping with adrenaline, alcohol& your first chemical high.You were only fourteen.I love you, I said Just come home.
What if you’d been black& had nowhere to go? Hemmed inwhenever you stretched those long limbs?You & your Wakka Wakka brothers, larking,like teenagers do. Chased outof the mall, to the Botanical Garden’s cool depths.But the paddy wagons are closing in. Blue birds of prey.The police have called in back up—their mate,the copper who ‘loves that kind of thing’…As if they’re talking about a BBQ,not somebody’s son, somebody’s heart.[1] ABC Radio National podcast about Aboriginal teenager Daniel Yock’s death in custody.
Heartbreaking and captivating - I can so relate to this dear Ana. Thank goodness our sons survived and we all lived to tell the tale! Sublimely written thank you for sharing.