Joe Scanbavel

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Wrecked Promises

The young brother
Hardly ten years and one
Heaved and grieved
Paced and weaved
Bare foot and pale
Along a lonely path
Leaving a lonely cottage
On a cold summer dusk
Over the African Savannah

The peasant had left
For a long sad journey
Away to the place of no return
High above the stars and constellations
His wife had left earlier
And soon there were the two of them
To fight on their own journey
Through the sands of time

He had seen him breath his last
And promised him to be the hero
Of a toddler baby brother
To rare and feed him for ever
Till he would go his way up
To the land of no return

Riding on his back
The toddler pestledhis young brother
He weaped in hunger
His empty tummy grumbled
His pale thin body grieved
He opened his mouth
With the lasts of his faint strength
He tucked his teeth on His back
And bit him in agony

Unable to stand it he weaped
Then young brother heaved in pain
And stared away to the horizon
He bore the pain and cursed the day
Remaining strong and perseverant
He walked down the lonely path
Ashamed of wrecking his promises

If only the rains had come
If only there were more corn
If only his neighbor had surplus gruel
If only his peasant parents were alive
If only his little brother stopped biting his flesh

Then he wouldn't feel all the pain
He wouldn't have to walk through the lonely path
That led to no where
And if there were no problems
There would be no promises
And he wouldn't have wrecked them.

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