The Child of Hungry Eyes

The house where he slept is gone—

A barren lot, now, in the dawn.

So where is he,

The child whose memory is haunting me?

With his skin, like a turnip left too long

Out of ground in the sun,

The last of twenty-five, born without a song,

Without a place to run,

The hunger shrieked from his eyes,

Despair in his sighs,

In hand-me-downs that never fit,

Never still, ever moving, he would sit.

His fingers nibbled up our treasures

For heroin, pills and acid cures

For brothers, uncles-who-weren’t, and mayhap fathers

Who spilled their deaths into the morning papers.

I required him day after day to stay

Till all his stolen prizes on the desktop lay

And day by day his take grew less and less

As though only stolen to confess.

One day escaping when I forgot the game,

He returned, though I did not call his name,

Offering two paper clips and a rubber band:

All of that day’s contraband.

A little praise, a little gentle care

I could easily spare

For hungry eyes and a true smile

That lost for once its former guile.

The house where he slept is gone–

A barren lot, now, in the dawn.

So where is he

The child of hungry eyes,

Child refugee

With hungry eyes?

#worldinternationalchildrensday