I was born in Huntingburg and raised in the rural town of Eckerty,
where just beyond the acre yard of a cabin there stands an old oak tree,
from which acorns have budded and fallen for well over a century.

As I sit and recollect my lost childhood and also my childhood home,
I am a restless and ravenous dog gnawing on a tired, old, bruised bone.
I have exhausted its meat and marrow but still I bite, I bark, I chew.

I was born with pneumonia, which the doctor deemed an emergency.
I was rushed to Evansville where the specialists could ably care for me,
could thwart that early threat. Sometimes I wish they had quite simply let it be,

that disease cultivated in the womb. But, alas, I yet live to comb,
through my young life, some events remembered precisely, others overblown.
I have filled to the high brim the barrow but still I pile, I prod, I view.

I was born a queer, sick thing. I sickened with my feminine energy.
I bore the weight of his disappointed love, endured acts of cruelty,
which my daddy doubtless thought might thus serve to make a better man of me.

I am locked by that land of my childhood home, longing for the frothy foam,
that would have crested upon the waves of his joy were I some common drone.
But I could not, as things were, broaden the narrow—that small mind never grew.

I was born in Huntingburg and raised in the rural town of Eckerty,
where just beyond the acre yard of a cabin still stands an old oak tree.
There, my father first began his lifelong quest to control and censure me.

As I sit and recollect my lost childhood and also my childhood home,
I am now the predator and the prey as I gnaw on the same old bone.
Father has armed my bow with his arrow. I kill. I bite, I bark, I chew.

02/09/2014

Posted on 02/09/2014
Copyright © 2024 Dane Campbell