These are the stairs my son told me
Where Evan Rhys that fateful day
Had wandered from his parents’ side
Took flight and fell to certain death
The day he died the angels cried
The children’s acting company
Relates he stretched to catch a toy
That rolled away beyond his reach
No piping stopped his playful try
He lost his balance at the breach
A moment’s lapse oh who knows how
That tot was in the hands of God
And gravity once friendly force
Now freely worked its fatal course
And drew him to the door of doom
Oh weeping mom oh mournful dad
Who knelt on bloody concrete gray
There to behold their broken boy
And wait upon his final breath
Forsaking ever any joy
How often had they dandled him
And tossed him high to be a bird
With kisses smeared this laughing child
Returned assured to parent’s grasp
And learned to love the air so mild
The past is rich with future’s signs
Which looking back we clearly read
His father’s fall from Melville’s mast
Each night foretold these dire lines
So tragically are actors cast
A poster showed his father’s leap
As Ariel balletic sprite
Who hung in air to this tyke’s eye
So having learned at one to walk
At two had Evan will to fly
And know the pain that later played
In saddened scene where lines were laid
To speak of hurling babe outside
A window twenty stories high
The knowing audience would gasp
Some years have passed since the event
Now girders guard the precipice
Lest child and air again embrace
Still Evan’s plight replays for me
A meditative mystery
Of every child whose tragic end
Has etched upon my memory
And stirred that deep parental fear
Why some will die and others live
I father four who yet survive
A man in Florida once took
His little tad to see the zoo
There lost him to the reptile pit
Where nature red in tooth and claw
Mistook him for an early meal
Not Solomon in all his wit
Could tell him wrest or stay his hand
To save that screaming mangled lad
From crushing of primeval maw
As father fought survival’s law
Poor David Toma must have felt
Exuberant for having saved
A child from choking on the beat
At dinnertime with family safe
His hero’s deed he proudly told
But little David five years old
As tale unwound began to gag
The errant food would not dislodge
His second miracle denied
By hour’s end his son had died
City manager Robinson
Who kept his family with a gun
From robbers’ thieves’ intruders’ threat
Came home to find a young son dead
A bullet blasted through his head
His youngsters thought to have some fun
But chanced to play unwisely rough
With weapon hid not well enough
And thus was his intent to save
Perverted to an early grave
Whose call was Abraham answering
When he placed Isaac on the logs
And plotted out his dagger’s plunge
But then was spared the final test
Of giving up his only son
What kind of God is this who thrives
On slaughter of the innocents
Who quakes the earth releases plagues
Who buries babes who rots their blood
Makes bellies burst deprived of food
If parents’ tears were joined withal
What torrent were that waterfall
Yet never calm the waking brain
Nor ever wash away the pain
Nor ever drown discovery’s shriek
How Reason’s god untroubled stands
Apart from that which he creates
His vistas grand enthrall the eye
From desert’s bleak unending sand
To snow-whipped Himalayan peaks
He dies in grandeur but alone
Whose luckless step finds the crevasse
The numbing cold’s creator’s touch
As certainly all life retakes
As drifting snows erase all tracks
Were this the sum of my belief
I would not even dare to write
For fear such lines respark a grief
Which sunders all for man and wife
Who bear that costly loss of life
I won’t accept a universe
Were providence statistical
Where life succeeds God’s prodigal
Supplying an excess of seeds
To outrun death’s consuming curse
Nor can a God be so perverse
To raise our hopes then dash them down
Destroy his sons so casually
Thus to ensure his single throne
And so unseat his children’s pride
Nor can he be an artisan
Who loses sight of his own work
Who crafts a piece and spins it off
Like gesture made and then forgot
For even we care more than that
The God who marks the sparrow’s fall
And numbers hairs upon our heads
Has not abjured the shadow’s path
But learned instead all flesh can feel
Of suffering pain loss and death
So come to comfort parents all
And hear the words of timeless love
Your anger he will not reprove
Who can your tortured dream relieve
Who can your shattered lives restore
He taught us humbly how to live
To honor first our father’s love
To give ourselves for others’ care
And faced for us what freedom brought
That vortex of destructive naught
Some followed him who worshipped power
Eager to sit beside his throne
In powers’ courts he power disowned
When terror struck they quickly fled
For with our weakness he allied
Was ever one more innocent
Who was accused confined abused
He healed the sick they tore his flesh
The sightless saw he hung for hours
What wrong deserved his horrid death
Then shook the earth with Father’s sobs
The darkened sky portrayed his gloom
His anger tore the temple door
Revealed how more alike we are
Than different for dying sons
And swaddled in the final cloth
At end he lay within a tomb
As borrowed as his cradle was
The fish the bread the wine now gone
His flock from purple wolf now hid
Then from the grave that rotted heart
Of evil’s hellish deep design
To glory rose the promised one
The king of our eternal spring
To reign in never-ending life
The world’s renewed because he rose
All evil’s triumph is undone
All which was lost shall be restored
The dumb shall sing the lame will dance
The hungry thrive the dead shall live
And in a children’s last crusade
Where every child who died too soon
Will to their parents’ arms parade
Evan in glory whole will rise
To wipe the teardrops from their eyes
Though earth still feels the shadow’s chill
When heaven’s sun we are denied
Through evil loss or our own will
Still time’s deceit cannot defeat
The light eternity has won
Make answer then to tragedy
By hope the unseen good we see
Not knowing how but through belief
Accepting seeds which bear the fruit
To bring our sorrowed souls relief
Oh weeping mom oh mournful dad
Who knelt on bloody concrete gray
Arise arise behold your boy
Forgive forgive your aching hearts
And live and live and know his joy
c 1986 J. S. Manista
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