MY CHILDHOOD TOYS

My favorite toys reached out to me
With their boundless souls in a mystery
So very powerfully that I didn’t need to know their names
Or even compel me to bestow a name on them.
In the guarded dour faced selfish feel of those
Closest to me,
They alone seemed to silently embrace my soul
And I always felt they were joyfully addicted
To one important solitary need;
Just for me to cherish them,
In what might be the font of all unconditional love
I rarely came across in all living entities around me…
In the black hole of my emptiness of no real identity
They beckoned to me to hold them,
And more so to fit them in my pocket
Where they became the strength of my fathers’ people
I never knew
And the kindly look of a mother
Who vowed to stay with me through all the angry years
Of the mannequin inhumanity of the woman who raised me…
These small cars, planes and soldiers
Always turned to me just to love and protect them
From being garbaged or given away
To those who recycled them in time
Or lost by other children
Who at best loved them only through a brief time
Of their childhood.
Where they lodged with the fleeting intensity of adopting
Some one elses child to fill a few passing years or months
In that time and all through my life
I’ve borne the guilt of negligence
Which allowed them to be kidnapped
With no ransom note or clue
To where they are today.

Ken Siegelman
Brooklyn Poet Laureate
March, 2007