The boy with the red pants

The boy in the red pants

was watching me pass by on the country road,

full of mud or dust.

This image comes from the past, yet it is still so vivid,

much more than anything I feel today, or on any other day,

lately.

​He could climb, fearless, the blue wooden fence,

each day, from Monday to Friday.

​When I first saw him, I remember asking myself

why he didn’t just open the gate.

Why struggle to climb up just to watch me in silence?

It never occurred to me that the gate might have been locked,

though he couldn’t run out onto the country road,

or maybe farther, to the end of all existing country roads,

or even farther, to the next roads—the concrete ones—

or even to a river.

​Sometimes I walked alone, because I knew the way back

to the old house by heart,

so the elders trusted me.

​The boy in the red pants never said a word, but I think he smiled.

Or at least, I hope he did, just once.

If not, why would I remember him from the last century?

​So that spring of ’86, I didn’t care much about friends—

I hadn’t made any at the village kindergarten anyway.

I didn’t care about the trees, flowers, or toys waiting for me on the porch.

I paid no attention to the newborn lambs from our sheep,

or the baby chicks from our chickens.

In the spring of ’86, I cared only for the boy in the red pants!

​I was so proud of him!

He always stood there silently, with a curious look,

curly blond hair,

and scraped, scratched hands.

​I tried to climb our fence, too, and I did.

But I could never keep my balance the way he did,

with a kind of elegance combined with wildness or recklessness.

I had too much caution back in the eighties.

I got rid of it!