The Wheelbarrow Journey Poem by R.A. Burleigh

I was frightened with every step the babies took
It wasn't right, it wasn't fair
It was my mother's old nightmare, not mine

I imagined the cocaine poet
I imagined the bar room brawl
Yet in my own world I had hung from trees, leaped over scar tissue

The old doctors called me; they all had wavy important hair
They'd read Shakespeare and Goethe texts
They explained the cycle of development, the rational of fear

And I could fake my calm, it was like eating watermelon
But every era had photos or etchings of infants dead in a parent's arms
Stationary as trees, disappearing like sunsets and rose petals

I waited for third grade, I waited for spring
I set up a May pole, I attached ribbons, hired guitar vagabonds
Then came hungry adolescence, my heart raced again

So it was with each red wheelbarrow, each canoe trip through the canyon
Until, one by one, I could see their separate lonely adulthood
And I rocked my parent's photo album asleep with a lullaby