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THE BOY IN THE PRAM

by Robin Baldwin

Robin Baldwin came to Wales in 2002 with his wife Donna as a large animal vet. He is now a qualified and popular Yoga teacher in Brecon. This and other poems by him can be found on my earlier website at http://www.peterbrooke.org.uk/poems/robinbaldwin/infiniteman.html

The boy in the pram he sits up like a young sparrow in a nest, 
looking out over, flexibly straight, he peers around and about, 
as a porcelain face of a circus clown, bright eyed, mouth open,
to throw a ball at to win the prize. What is going on inside
this little boy's mind as cells profusely divide, infinitely so 
born to nothing, hurrying to gain a connection, as late for the train,
of thought perhaps, a destination to where recognition is naively stored - 
of no afraid-ness, where why there is? Is far away; and for the first time
this journey is a sensory ride without the ship that carries the slaves, without the soldiers that go to war, without the players to compete, without the game of two halves, a trip direct he has, via satellite link, as he sees without interjection, without soliloquy or curtain as he stares back into space as the cool morning mist which hangs to the footpath and the fern that grows in the wall by cemented roots drifts to the wind of a shoulder or arm, and if it was touched by Mum, she never to have noticed, but the boy looks and then stares again into space, there is no harm that comes in the crevice it is residing, as this boy in the pram is wheeled on into the sensory unknown, of streets and bridges and shops, the rumbling buses, all noise denying the sound of this inner cell division inside forever increasing to understand that this boy is not a duck out of water as he paddles along with mum, instinctively calm in knowing she is, where she is; without reason and that is old, that is long long time ago, this duckling in the brainstem, of an ancient lower dimension; instigated to do many things without knowing, intrinsic breath and beat way before the drum; yet it is the track that leads to the swing bridge of clear perception, and on the otherside, an inner dimension similar to what this boy sees from his pram. My air condenses in front of me, but I do not see this boy's, it is long and shallow - silent as a praying mantis waiting for its catch, as it will come along sooner or later and strike, it will, like this boy, in developing a mind of his own, autonomously be so subconscious and unaware, and after a while he will be like the sparrow that has fallen out of its nest. Not really knowing where he has gone.


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