~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Robert Charles Jones

Growing In, And Out, Of Innocence

I grew in a world that knew no caution.

I ran the ditches and toyed freely

with a child’s wisdom,

finding there a lifelong game.

I learned there

the language of my dreaming

and spoke only within it.

What need had I of other tongues,

when truth was itself, always,

and sheltered no subtle weapons

sheathed in the hands of words?

I found woven in my child’s fabric

a child’s understanding

of the old and eccentric,

the textures made into memory

and left to linger upon

the heart and beneath the touch

as that gathered in life

is left scattered behind –

but I had no need to express it then.

I grew there a belly-measure

of innocent pride,

full-faced and merciful

before the mercy of the doting sun

and called myself complete;

for I was in the service

of all that was beginning.

I fostered passions deep in the Delta,

and footholds in its skirting hills,

and held no guard against brutal harvest,

for then, the pure joy of seeding

ran full enough.

Robert Charles Jones is a 73-year-old native Mississippian, born where the Bluff Hills disappear into the dark flatness of the Delta. In his youth, he had a few things printed in school chapbooks. Today, he is finally ready to put a little effort into it. Email: cjones86@bellsouth.net