George M. Noblitt

THE LITTLE ONE

 

Beside a winding road of dry dust

Sits a rundown squatters shack

A small boy watches from the doorway

Trying to remember back

 

Children on the dirt trail out front

Kindly wave as they pass by

He quickly shuts the heavy front door

Fighting hard the need to cry

 

Once when his mother was still alive

She had let him go to school

But his father thinks it's a pure waste

Time thrown away by a fool

 

The man raw from a night of drinking

Grabs the small boy as he roars

He slaps the frail boy hard on the back

Then sends him to do the chores

 

Finished the boy returns to the shack

The man falls into a rage

Once more he tells the boy he's no good

As he takes the small one's guage

 

The boy's life has been bitter and hard

No mother for many years

Nights when the man takes to the bottle

Are the nights the boy now fears

 

The small one's value now is measured

By plowing and planting fields

His life is a regimen of toil

He does what his father wills

 

No compassion from father to son

The boy dreams of a kind word

For cruelty cannot quell the boy's love

"I love Daddy" is still heard

 

The boy once more has been badly beat

He stumbles back to the chores

This time his body cannot respond

He falls hard by the barn doors

 

He lays upon a bed of cornshucks

Beaten until black and blue

He winces and his little body shakes

Tomorrow it all starts anew