Charles Hughes: Child’s Play

Child’s Play

• “Back in the day, . . . almost every boy
• would come to school . . . with . . . marbles
• (small colorful glass orbs about three-quarters
• of an inch in diameter).”
• —“Find Your Marbles, Grandpa,” Arkansas
• Democrat-Gazette, June 15, 2020

• The boys played marbles in the schoolyard.
• The girls jumped rope or drew
• Their hopscotch courts in thick white chalk, then
• Hopped quick, as dancers do.

• One boy stood by himself, just watching.
• He felt much more alone
• For having had his marbles stolen—
• A sadness down to the bone.

It happened earlier that morning:

He’s walking, almost there,

A block from school, when two sixth-graders

Pounce—from what seems thin air.

He drops his tan felt pouch of marbles.

His face hits the hard grass.

The older boys run off. He rises,

Takes stock of what he has.

A bloody nose (not truly painful).

Both shoes—untied—still on.

His homework safe inside its notebook.

His marbles, though? They’re gone.

The bell rang, and the schoolday started.

He mourned the marbles he’d lost.

His teacher saw his mind was elsewhere;

She said he looked engrossed.

Aggies, cat’s eyes, solids—all sizes—

Each marble had its appeal.

He’d knelt sometimes in his yard and studied

Small beauties he could feel.

His favorite, a deep-sapphire solid,

The boulder he’d called his best,

Would spark in his mind an ocean’s surface—

Vast, sunlit, warm, at rest.

His mother noticed scrapes and redness.

He told her that he fell.

His mother asked for the whole story.

He said, only, he fell.

His forehead, nose, and chin unreddened.

He outgrew second grade.

Years flew by. His old grief grew older

Along with him. It stayed.

His grief flourished—part loss, part knowledge.

He finally told his wife

But kept what happened hidden from others,

Locked up in his inner life.

His children suffered their own sorrows,

Some clearly the kind time tames.

He watched from the sidelines, knowing child’s play

Is more than fun and games.

Charles Hughes is the author of the poetry collection Cave Art (Wiseblood Books 2014), and was a Walter E. Dakin Fellow at the 2016 Sewanee Writers’ Conference. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the Alabama Literary Review, The Christian Century, the Iron Horse Literary Review, Measure, the Saint Katherine Review, the San Diego Reader, the Sewanee Theological Review, and elsewhere. He worked as a lawyer for 33 years before his retirement and lives with his wife in the Chicago area.