Bradbury’s Closet
In the nursery, nothing is too good for our children.
Stop yelling at walls when they grasp at our book of old tales.
Trying to sleep, you are compacted, sticking out gently.
There’s a little blood in your blanket and I enter it,
instinctively torturing it like a door slam.
I laugh. You cry. Nobody reacts.
I check the little ones, but the nursery is
a huge, huge door.
We stare at the door as if something
is jumping against it from the other side.
So, let’s tear down the Nursery.
The children are lions and
there are lines of lions, lines of
fathers too.
Unlike them, you were never too young.
You had one out before you knew
what your widget twas, what you on
someone else’s soul was, what shooting people
with capital letters on stringent lines was.
No wonder they stepped into a pickup,
a door straight away form your make-believe
suitcase of debris.
Growing old children is hard.
You exercise your mind with domestic fantasies,
while they open and enter any installed door
to escape from you who are
down the dark hallways,
eager to restrict the way one
kisses the lions.