A poem by Charles Hughes: The Faith of Children

• The Faith of Children
• Two boys. A hot, unmoving sun. No fish.
• Stepping unwatched and solemn into the river—
• Slow, muddy water, quickly to their waists—
• The boys wade out like pilgrims toward an island,
• A little island forty yards from shore,
• Tall grass, tall trees, small birds apparently
• Its only summer residents, the island
• That weeks of fishing in the heat have worked
• And worked deep in the boys’ imaginations,
• As if it were a seed of restlessness,
• More spell than island, vision more than spell.

• Summer is ending. School—sixth grade—will start.
• The fall will see the Cuban missile crisis
• Flare up and flash but not explode. Already,
• Veiled plans take off to mar the verdant forests
• And crops of Vietnam.
• In seven short years,
• Both boys will move away, and one will die,
• When his plane goes down while spraying Agent Orange.
• The other boy won’t come to terms — he’ll die
• An old man still aghast at how the world
• Waylays its children, steals them from their tasks,
• Which don’t compute, as no faith ever can.

Charles Hughes has published two books of poems, The Evening Sky (2020) and Cave Art (2014), both from Wiseblood Books. He worked for over 30 years as a lawyer and now works at writing poems.