Treehouse
by Odin Roark

Facing the unpainted door with one hinge missing,
I hold the brush arm’s length,
its gunmetal pigment dripping down the handle.
My painter’s decision delaying the moment,
while oil-based tendrils meander across my hand and cuff.

The canvas waits.

Its three by five-foot surface
washed of storm-threatening skies overhead
shadow the wind-whipped branches
quivering their fall-laden colors around the door.

Like the sage of another era,
the tree’s tortured bark of gallant pride
remains ready to weather another hundred years,
protecting nature’s wrinkled and knife carved smiles,
embracing any generation’s aged building slats,
where rusty nails secure fantasy
just as knotted-out windows
breathe in youthful dreams made real.

Behind the door…

Are imagined walls once real,
where hung my ball park mitt
beside thumbtacked pictures of my heroes
where anxious boyhood dreams,
became big boy privacies,
when centerfolds were hidden prizes.

How loving,
how comforting,
this reflection of youthful fun,
knowing my freedom of joy today
is of confined time.

My eyes remain fixed.

Another attempt at success
above the tethered ladder of rope,
my forever-door unfinished,
it’s only penciled.

Dare I color the hasp?
At least that’s a start.

If only…

To enter,
To return to my yesterdays.

I slump in the chair,
chin to my chest,
the brush remaining idle once again,
my enduring palette still alive and waiting.

Lifting my eyes
from legs I once had,
now only serving as an IED reminder of what long ago was,
I focus again on the doorway to happier times,
when locks were never needed,
where doors were left open
where incessant nightmares didn’t exist,
where hope for forgiveness remains a dream.

I lean forward, lay one brushstroke down
and remind myself why it continues but a painting in progress.

I retire my brush and palette,
gaze beyond the canvas with battlefield eyes
to all that happened so quickly on that sand-laden road,
hoping tomorrow, with the help of my boyhood treehouse,
will let me imagine rewards for that which never had a chance to happen