Bullet Hole, 1994

[grannyjill]

After the echo and the arrest, the reporters,
the open gate in the backyard,
we went to see the damage.

When my father stopped me
from going any further,
I was busy thinking of coal,
the brittle rock
that turns men into mines
with claps of dust.
I thought there was a piece of it
in the wall.

That week, it followed
my eyes through windows,
staring into the hallway from outside.

Once, when no one was home,
I went to touch it,
only to find a

hole

bewitchingly black.
The emptiness
I explored like a flashlight
aimed at the sky,

let the darkness
limp over my finger
as ash

and by the time the house awoke
my burial had left me cold
to the nail.

I was a miner
carving life
out of stone;

digging for shells
with the voices of tides,
holding them to my ear

wishing they would not
tell me of their birth
and how close I was
to death.

Hi, Phil - I've just posted a critique of this but I returned to delete it since on second thoughts it wasn't clear what I was trying to say. Basically, I really enjoyed this poem, I like the line breaks, I like the child's-eye-view of the strange adult world and well, everything about this actually....as you can see, not a critique which is of any use to you!
Sorry.