Portrait Of A Boy At Dawn

The green metal bird shimmies
North along the muddy banks
Sweeps south, flying high, low
A risky business feeling them out
The tall slender reeds bowing
Beneath us.

We bank hard right, dip again
Blowing the green curtain down
The boy equally stunned
His mud-laden AK no match

In the forever time
His astonished face, his forever No!
When brrraaapp flips him backward
His starry cartwheel a bloody splash
Dissolved in mud.

In the cool morning air we nose up
Thankfully pull away, his immense
Frightened eyes follow me
Forever wake me at home.

_____________

Marc Levy
Published in New Madrid, Winter 2017