Kevin Cutrer
Toys
A boy is breaking
mating damselflies apart.
The hair-thin legs
struggle against his fingers.
Ripping mate from mate,
he learns nothing
of love-making mid-air,
or what brought iridescence
to descend upon
his finger puckered
in pondwater.
He chances to glance
through window panes
of a mullioned wing,
and what does he see
but a room full of toys,
soft animals he will never touch
never make speak
in the singsong
of his playtongue.
He will only ever have
their insubstantial plush
in this memory more brittle
than the wing of a dream.
It will remain an ache
the world rubs as it moves him.
A piece on a board
he is the world’s toy now.
Going where taken.
Staying where put down.
Here a boy, there a man.
Everywhere mourning
those button eyes.
Eyes that were not made to see.
Summer
From his blue tower
an unhappy analyst looks down
upon happy children
skipping in the liquid argyle
of the fountain’s jets of water.
From his blue tower
he looks down on them,
but when their necks crane upward
they only see
a cloud menagerie,
the startling blue welkin
reflected in the glass of his tower,
and sun flashing off hot steel.
