Only Child
P. K. Page


The early conflict made him pale
and when he woke from those long weeping slumbers
       she was there
and the air about them—hers and his—
sometimes a comfort to him, like a quilt, but more
often than not a fear.

There were times he went away—he knew not where—
over the fields or scuffing to the shore,
suffered her eagerness on his return
for news of him—where had he been, what done?
He hardly knew and didn't wish to know
or think about it vocally or share
his private world with her.

Then they would plan another walk, a long
adventure in the country, for her sake—
in search of birds.    Perhaps they'd find the blue
heron today, for sure the kittiwake.

Birds were familiar to him now, he knew
them by their feathers and a shyness like his own,
soft in the silence.
By the pool she said, "Observe,
the canvas back's a diver," and her words
stuccoed the slatey water of the lake.

He had no wish to separate them in groups
or learn the Latin, 
or, waking early to their song remark, "the thrush,"
or say at evening when the air is streaked
with certain swerving flying,
"Ah, the swifts."

Birds were his element like air and not
her words for them—making them statues
setting them apart,
nor were they lots of little facts and details like a book.
When she said, "Look!"
he let his eyeballs harden
and when two came and nested in the garden
he felt their softness, gentle, near his heart.

She gave him pictures which he avoided, showing 
them flat and coloured on a painted land.
Rather would he lie in the grass, the deep grass of the 
       island
close to the gulls' nests knowing
these things he loved and needed by his hand,
untouched and hardly seen but deeply understood.
Or sailing among them through a wet wind feeling
their wings within his blood.

Like every mother's boy he loved and hated
smudging the future photograph she had
yet struggled within the frames of her eyes and then
froze for her, the noted naturalist—
her very affectionate and famous son.
But when most surely in her grasp, his smiles
darting and enfolding her, his words:
"Without my mother's help..." the dream occurred.

Dozens of flying things surrounded him
on a green terrace in the sun
and one by one
as if he caught caresses in his palm
he caught them all and snapped and wrung their necks
brittle as little sticks.
Then through the bald, unfeathered air
and coldly, as a man would walk
against a metal backdrop, he
bore down on her
and placed them in her wide maternal lap
and accurately said their names aloud:
woodpecker, sparrow, meadowlark, nuthatch.