GRAVITY: Seven Scenes
In memory of Aylan Kurdi
By Jim Van Eaton
Scene I: Five Years Old at the Beach
Gravity holds my Ozzie, my beached son.
We are on vacation, his first time at Myrtle.
Instead of walking in the surf, turtle,
like the other kids, he lays, just for fun,
at the top edge of each succeeding wave,
face down, gently buoyed by the ocean
as it ebbs and flows, removing his sun lotion.
Ozzie laughs at every tide that bathes
his skin. “He’ll just lie there and burn,
like some Coppertone sunblock ad,”
I say. “Get up!” but he’s too stubborn.
He squeezes his arms and drills in like a mad,
waterlogged, “I won’t turn!”
driftwood, lifeless, ‘til I tickle him, then he’s a shad!
Driftwood, lifeless ‘til I tickle him, then he’s a shad,
he jumps up and runs uphill to his mom’s
open arms under a, stuck-above-the-foam-
line, blue umbrella. She pats his head and talks,
croons more like, as I quietly sneak up behind
his back and grab his shoulders and bark
like a seal, lifting him in my flippers. I yell, “Shark!”—
and waddle him out into deeper waves. Brine
up to his armpits, pops up and burns his eyes
“My goggles!” Ozzie screams.” I’m his dad
again, so I twist around and sprint up the beach for the prize.
With goggles suctioned in place, he looks like a tad-
pole. “Let’s do it again!” he cries,
on a shape shifting swell, totally rad.
Scene II: Six Years Old in His Room
On a shape shifting swell, totally rad,
Oz takes scissors and neatly cuts tufts
from his naturally, wavy, curly hair. I muff
his remaining shocks and say, “It’s not so bad.”
“Shave him,” my wife says. She’s had
enough. “But leave a small stand of stuff
to cover his scalp,” I say. He looks rough.
Gravity pulls the snips to the floor. I’m mad!
I like his hair to be long and thick.
Religion kept mine short at his age,
and I take his butch hair as a kick
to my vicarious rebellion. The outrage
to buzz-cut Ozzie’s hair pricks
like a projectile shot from a cannon.
Like a projectile shot from a cannon,
Ozzie doesn’t care at all. He runs
down the stairs and back up like a ton-
sized, super ball, just for fun.
He feels light headed and free, the hair-
cut slingshots his normal super-
active, hyper-sonic. Arm swooper
wide, he zooms, he roars, he flies through the air
outside to swing. The breeze blasts his skull.
“You look like a peach, you imp!”
He swings in reply, higher than high, ankle
above head. His hair lies limp
on the floor in his still room like lamb’s wool.
He’s my Michelin man, my peach fuzz blimp.
Scene III: Six Years Old at the Pool
He’s my Michelin man, my peach fuzz blimp.
He bounces above the entire kid nation
at the neighborhood pool, buoyed up by flotation
an unsinkable, fearless, terrible, bobbing shrimp
with swarthy, swollen, air-filled arms,
waist, decked out with full to pop
inflatables. He’s practically Peter walking on top,
butt, legs, anchored below. He storms
clear across the fifty yard pool
of older kids who, bound after bound,
push and propel my Stay Puft ghoul.
He spins and howls for joy like a scented hound,
over his mother, who can’t overrule,
a mother jumping, open-mouthed squall.
A mother jumping, open-mouthed squall,
she yells at the top of her blow,
“OZZIE! Get back over here NOW!”
Coolest thing I’ve seen. I’m in his thrall.
Delighted, he vibrates straight through the lane-
line, into the hollering bumper-kids-dive-
pool, pockety-pocking, doing the jive;
toward the board which hovers like a crane
and clambers to its edge over the rave.
He becomes a baby rhino-cannon-ball,
creates a monster-rocker, shock-wave,
as raucous kids undulate wall to wall.
BULLS-eye! howling and hooting like the depraved,
a little Tasmanian devil fireball!
Scene IV: Three Years Old in Our Apartment
A little Tasmanian devil fireball,
in our small apartment: I’m canning tomatoes,
an entire bushel, as Oz tiptoes
up to a safety gate, his wall.
The sink, the knife, the pot, the Balls, the brine
clatter from the kitchen. As if by fate,
fence-climber Ozzie scales the gate.
At the top, headfirst, he dives,
Crack! His projectile head neatly
breaks the tile with a loud, sick snap.
He’s scared and crying, the little monkey,
as I scoop him in my arms he whimpers
I didn’t think he could climb that. He is three.
He won’t go down for a nap, the little chimp!
He won’t go down for a nap, the little chimp!
I stack a second gate in the entry.
“To keep you on the carpet side you see!”
I put Thomas on TV and clumsily gimp
over the gates. “You scared me to death!”
Watching Thomas the Tank and very still,
He holds his blanket, does that post-spill,
post-cry, double, hiccup breath.
“THAT KID COULD HAVE DIED,” I say
out loud, to the air, “little moron!”
The two gates stacked in the doorway
Creak at me, “He’s safe. Don’t carry on!”
He watches locomotives. In some way
the TV screen is filled with Ozzie.
Scene V: A Three Year Old on Television
The TV screen is filled with Ozzie
the day a Turkish police man, in a vest,
found a toddler lifeless, on the coast,
in Charlie Brown shoes, and shorts, he’s three,
a doppelganger to my Oz, above the foam-
line, the clothes, the shoes, the hair, the same.
In Aylan Kurdi’s eyes there is no flame.
He never will rise up or travel home.
Aylan’s image erodes my mind like sand.
I sob big round baby tears.
My shirt front is a tidal wetland.
Aylan’s head, my Ozzie’s buzz-cut head;
Aylan’s hands, my Ozzie’s little hands;
Aylan’s body, My Ozzie’s, lifeless, DEAD!
Aylan’s body, My Ozzie’s, lifeless, DEAD!
Aylan’s family, Abdullah, Rehana, Galip,
war refugees on a smuggler’s cheap
rubber raft, ventured into the Med
to go twenty kilometers from Bodrum to Kos,
wearing phony life jackets. The boat
flipped on a broad wave. The turncoat-
smuggler swam off. Abdullah rose,
surfaced, a boy in each arm, no third
hand to grip the gunwale, just feet and knees
to thrust them upward. Frantic words
Aylan screamed, “Please Don’t die Daddy!”
his mother’s soul drifting other-world,
his father’s arms wide open to the sea.
Scene VI: Eternity In My Head
His father’s arms wide open to the sea,
Galip died first. In those ropy arms,
Abdullah tried to keep Aylan from harm,
but he succumbed degree by degree.
What force, what kind of GRAVITY kills
a refugee family and sticks a little kid
like a drowned sea otter, face hid,
straight down in the sickening sand, so still?
Is this the gravity that mobilizes kings,
presidents, and terrorists to aimless bloodshed?
Is this the despot’s tool, the state’s plaything,
the prick that keeps me awake every night in bed,
the very demonic, dark and evil sting,
gravity, the pull inside my head?
Gravity, the pull inside my head,
I feel your fleshy fingers as they grip
my mental tapestry and start to rip,
to tease apart the careful braided threads.
I fear they’ll rend the well-planned weave
that keeps my life in order like a dream,
a broken, midnight, insane steam,
hissed out between parched lips, “believe!”
“Believe you’ll never see your children die;
Believe you’ll never hear their anguished plea;
believe the Father’s Spirit in the Sky
enshrouds them, fills their lives & keeps them free,
from harm. Believe they’ll never occupy
such awful scenes, washed, like debris.”
Scene VII: In Despair
Such awful scenes, washed, like debris,
the online media image firestorm,
as if to sear my mind with Aylan’s form,
replays the scene straight through to dawn.
In the end, the Turkish, rescue man
lifts Aylan’s body to an ambulance,
and once again I feel, as in a trance,
an omen striking close to my own clan.
“Gravity, I beg you now, post haste
to leave my motley boys alone! Instead
deliver me; I want it all erased.
I want to hand off —fully shed
the beach, poor Aylan, the waves, the after taste —
blot out this curdled wine and broken bread.
Blot out this curdled wine and broken bread.
I never want my boys to know disasters,
torturers, murderers, molesting masters,
drowning, disease, or malignant mortal dread.
I want them to inhabit a safe space
without IUD bombshells,
or creepy social media terror cells,
no human trafficking or war to face.
Who will transport them inside a walled
city, a gated refuge, safely spun
outside this wretched, human free-for-all?
Almighty Creator, under the naked sun,
before You, I am completely appalled!
Gravity holds my Ozzie, my beached son.
FINALE
Gravity holds my Ozzie, my beached son,
driftwood, lifeless, ‘til I tickle him, then he’s a shad
on a shape shifting swell, totally rad,
like a projectile shot from a cannon.
He’s my Michelin man, my peach fuzz blimp,
a mother jumping; open-mouthed squall,
a little Tasmanian devil fireball!
He won’t go down for a nap, the little chimp!
The TV screen is filled with Ozzie.
Aylan’s body… My Ozzie’s, lifeless, DEAD!
His father’s arms wide open to the sea.
Gravity that pulls inside my head
such awful scenes, washed, like debris,
blot out this curdled wine and broken bread.
True Truth Revealed 