BPR 52 | 2025
—Kabul, Afghanistan (September 2011)
How does it go round? There must be a crank
or maybe not—maybe you’ve got to push
the little handmade pony your kid picks out
or maybe it’s the little rider who makes it go
by hops & skips, clambering on & bolting off
in quick bursts of dust with no looking back.
Does it really work? There could be a winch
or a switch to trip, but look how rinky-dink
it looks in this shot, look how gingerly you’d need
to be around it, so flimsy you’re willing to bet
the next sandstorm’s sure to wipe it off the map
with the snap of a matchstick or a wishbone.
Can it even turn? There can’t be a motor, but
is that a lever or possibly a pulley? Maybe
you can’t believe your own lying eyes & away
it whirs at a wicked clip till your offspring’s
a blur, but where’s the ballast, what’s the secret
to the center holding as the elfin team orbits?
Why here? Who put it up? Maybe it’s a lark
or a fluke, or maybe it means the world
to the hands that made it out of all the stuff
you’ll find lying about in a place gone bust
or a one-time no-go zone, the sort of thing
you’d maybe rig up where one was before
if you were picking up the pieces & starting over
after who knows how long, beginning right here
on a hardscrabble plain outside your divided city
with something rickety but exemplary, strange
but true, barebones but all there, down-to-earth but
above the fray, rough & ready, sweetness & light—
eight homemade mounts dangling on ropes, eight
stopgap umbrella-rib yardarms jutting out from
a sketchy makeshift hub atop a wonky makeshift shaft,
but neat & bright with new paint, waiting there
so a waif can go flying over the dead lake & the ghost
fort’s turrets, faster & faster, not looking back.