Hope

A little boy lived in a hut out of town,
On an isle in between streams.
He didn’t have parents; lost when they drowned
In the river, while chasing their dreams.

It was summer, with warmth and fresh summer air
And soon he enjoyed being free;
For he was too young to learn how to despair;
For food, he had a fruit tree.

Daily he’d wake, and see sleepily
That an apple had fallen somewhere.
He’d take it and munch it hungrily,
Before tossing the core over there.

And thus the weeks passed; eventually;
The boy kept the doctor at bay:
At morn he would sit at the shade of the tree
And wait for his fruit for the day.

Autumn arrived; the leaves turned red,
And then disaster struck:
When the boy woke from his bed,
His tree was out of luck.

The boy, of course, was totally lost:
What happened to his tree?
So he decided, with legs crossed,
To sit and wait patiently.

The sun went down; the moon arose
The shadows stretched long and tall.
And the little boy shivered in his clothes
For still not one fruit did fall.

“Maybe tomorrow”, he said to himself,
While dizzying shapes spun his head;
And he dragged his body back up to the shelf
Of rock that made up his bed.

For weeks he awaited; the hope of youth!
Surviving only on drink;
His mind only held these three basic truths:
To fast, to wait and to think.

Winter approached, and snow brought the cold
And the frost that chilled to the bone;
And the boy realized that, truth be told,
The tree had left him alone.

And with all hope lost, with all promise gone,
The temperature hardened his soul:
He couldn’t continue placing hope at the dawn;
That became his ultimate goal:

To not depend on anyone,
To have no need for hope;
And when that was all said and done
He found new ways to cope.

He did not want for anything
Nor did he expect more,
Happiness was what the fates would bring;
All else, he would ignore.

He learnt to fish, he learnt to cook,
He learned to trap and bait.
He learnt to hunt and learned to look
For food that lay in wait.

Winter turned to spring, and soon
Summer returned with its power.
And in that time the apple tree blooms
Turned into fruit from their flowers.

The little boy, now another year older,
Was also another year wise.
The sunlight that shone though the tree’s leaves were colder
Than the fire that burned in his eyes.

“In the hour when I needed you most,
You turned and went your way.
Now from the dead and like a ghost,
You try to hold me sway.

“I’ve learnt to live without sadness or pain,
Even if you disappear.”
And like droplets of a crimson rain,
The apples fell like tears.