Red-Headed Boys

The red-headed boys learned affection for

cardinals seen through the picture window. 

The birds’ compulsive attacks on their own 

image in the mirror glass. The ripe color 

ink of a teacher's pen correcting

the precise strokes of melody for spring, 

brash as lush species of music being formed.

The red-headed boys did not learn to avoid

the summer sunlight they had waited for. None

knew then what harsh sun could do to skin, 

Their mother who protected their childhood

from known enemies took them to the beach

sand of the Great Lake. The boys and the mother

bathed beneath the sun where they burned

for the joy of fresh waves washing their skin.

The red-headed sons of the mother, herself

a redhead, needed rain and the indoor 

cushion of a safer light to cool their

freckled skin. They needed distance from the sun.

But they kept scrapbooks of their happiness

beneath the fiery sun. Only their skin

absorbed the memory of the splashes

of precious daylight hours of birdsong.