Bent Nails

Parts of an old barn and an old chicken coop,

bits and pieces of anything we could find

and haul away to the near woods, a broken wheel

and a wooden crate, even the rusted bed of a pickup truck

long removed and dumped here, but it was still sturdy,

not that it mattered really, for today we are building

a fort from which to defend ourselves, the five of us

boys from around the old farm neighborhood, once a grand

homestead and dairy barn, now gone to rot and ruin and a mecca

for young boys in need of building material, bits and pieces,

parts of anything we could find. So we dragged it all

across the yard and over the field, overgrown and littered,

innumerable trips, pushing and pulling, dragging and lugging

what we could, so many trips out and back until our

fortress began to take shape, sturdy walls propped up

and lashed together with bailing wire, strands of rotted rope

knotted many times, old bent nails pounded somewhat straight,

and an old barn door reinforced to keep it shut fast against those

who, foolishly, might attack, laying siege to this our fort, our stronghold.

It took us days of hauling and building and reinforcing, searching

and finding more to use, just to get it right, right down to the secret

door in the back for a quick escape in time of need. And in as many days

of building, we moved on, back to school or a family vacation or some

other youthful adventure calling us away, and from our minds and lives,

the fort was abandoned, over-taken, perhaps, and we fled away out

the secret door to safety. Except Timmy, Tim, today Timothy,

Lord of the Castle, the King who returned day after day to rule the fort

by himself, he alone to maintain its battlements, raise its standard high

and lower it when he left, safely stowing it in an old crate

until he disappeared one day, he and his family and the U-Haul trailer

carrying their sparse possessions, all they owned;

he never told us, never said good-bye, and we never saw him again,

not even a postcard to say he was gone, and this day returning here,

we wonder, where did he go? Whom did he become?

 

Now there are three of us left to remember: John missing in Vietnam,

never came home, not even a box in a deep-dug grave; George came

safely home, but he is scarred, not the same anymore; Eddy’s

a big success in some big city, a high roller, divorced, again, yet happy,

his hands wrapped around a whiskey bottle; and me, winded and a nagging

cough I can’t shake from too many years of nicotine, an old habit, comforting.

We paused frequently in our climb, this group of old men, crawling

through brush and briar grown up across the yard, over the field

to where the fort had once been, no reason to go, just to go back, to remember,

to quell our wondering, our curiosity, and to verify the stories we told

about part of a barn and an old chicken coop, our fortress, that part of our lives

when we were ten years old and all we had, all that mattered anymore,

was each other, a now tattered standard stowed away, deep in a broken box

buried under a pile of rubble, bits and pieces, and the remains of an old

fort remaining fresh in our memories, that and the stories that we’ve told

all these years gone by, our lives held together by bailing wire, rotted rope

knotted many times, and the bent nails we pounded straight.