By Gary LeBel
“Bring me my Bow of burning gold”
William Blake, Jerusalem
He may be all of ten. He’s hiked on ahead of his elders and younger siblings, taken the lead
on the trail, a blazer, protector, explorer, loner, or budding alpha male. As he walks some
ten to twenty paces ahead of me, I can hear him as he talks to himself or perhaps he’s
singing.
Missing its quiver and arrows, he carries a bow at his side, but soon hangs it over his
shoulder so that it rides his back like an Arthurian knight, or a Cheyenne leading his pony.
When he slows a little, I pass him and, as I do, I commend him on his bow. Though I’ve
probably disturbed his reverie, he’s quick to smile and, like most any boy his age, his mood’s
a chimerical thing. He’s a polite, good-looking lad and his life awaits him like the winding
paths that wend their ways through the park’s small and intimate woods.
Having left him far behind me now, two thoughts come to mind and one’s a question: how
incandescent yet bittersweet is youth . . . and what sort of world are we bequeathing him,
this boy with a bow?
Through the long afternoon
it seemed a prism had led the way
like a team of Isthmian horses
though it was the same old world as always
bathed in September light