Greenroom
The play was not in ordinary time,
He and classmate Mary memorizing,
Words, positions, several costume changes.
And his being coached to be persons other
Than what he was always told he was,
Feeling more marionette than actor,
Eager to cut strings from marshalled head and
Appendages, free a new inner force.
The boy thought himself less fixed on who
He was than most kids he knew, but acting
As the agent needed, not a distraction,
More a fitted piece in a story’s puzzle.
At first too busy to notice strain
Building, he held out through the sword swatting
Before returning props to their closet hooks
To hear them swing and xylophone the wall.
This night, his silver-starred room stayed shut,
His own mom first among those who waited
For her boy who’d voiced and played the dragon girl
To reenter and amuse them more
In his sweet persisting breaking treble.
Who would blame his waiting one rock candy
Longer, on the precipice of puberty,
Which stalled longer than his first words at three,
Chin projecting beneath the stiff-cowl,
Light bleaching his thin covering of voile,
The boy directs a long bone-thin hand
From the wrist he’d sprained showing off on ice,
Feels light in the head. Mary, now an angel
In a sequined scarf as wings, waves him
Steady. He’d grown fond of her, whether real
Or just now his part, he’d no time to know.
And what closing words would bring the curtain,
Coming from his mouth or . . . words so deeply
Ingested as to be forgotten . . . There!
Final taped X…Exhale…Inhale…Project
* * *
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More from Don Moss: POETRY: Cards At The Center, Breakfast Stories: OPEN Sign, Breakfast Stories: In a Box