Boyd
This four-year-old boy doesn't reach the barber's-cape end, let alone the floor.
His head is the only evidence that it is Boyd.
His thick, brown, short-cropped hair is combed straight forward.
A constant smile ignores cut hair falling all around.
Those hazel eyes captivate.
His spirited exploration of every event draws imagination to his mind.
Dad, sitting in another barber's chair, answers every comment Boyd utters.
It seems this boy acquires self-reliance and expresses good will.
Boyd seems a god facing death;
one of those people who master life (perhaps including its end);
perfecting his person with the mind in that head probing from the cape and
with the spirit of that smile beaming from his face.
Phil Beaver
phillip@beaver.brcoxmail.com
November 17, 2001, Rev. November 19, 2001, then on October 8, 2018, in conversation with my friend Jared McIntosh, Baton Rouge, LA. Changed to Boyd October 19, 2018.
Revised from the original, “Davey,” published in The Colors of Life, 2003;
https://www.amazon.com/Colors-Life-International-Library-Poetry/dp/0795152396
