Firebelly Salamander

"Mother, your little boy's dying at the gates,
with a mace and a longbow arrow lodged firm
in his breastplate. Isn't there something we should do?"
"Won't it be a shock to the coroner's colander--
his blood is so thick with the fight.
And when they find the twentysomething hearts in his stomach?
It was all I could get him to eat some nights," she sighs
and looks out towards the castle wall.
She closes her eyes and faces the far-off moat
where I splashed and sputtered, practicing my strokes
and the Dead Man's Float among the crocodiles,
always to return to her side, forever her eldest child.
Father, your boy's being gunned down on a plane.
He's out reading Marx on the left wing again,
and they can't get him to come in--
they've tried, but his singing's a bathtub gin."
"He'll jump when his wings are fully-grown,
or he'll learn to build some on the way down."
"He won't hit the ground for miles..."
"Yes, but he'll be in complete denial," he smiles
weakly, but it's better than yearly.
He scratches his head, and raises his eyes
to his son's pallbearers, floating thither and yon
and on and on into a sun too-bright.
For a moment his boy's a kite.
Don't harvest blame, after the rains come
to drown and to destroy,
'cause you tried to pull your child
out from the fire, but you couldn't
pull the fire out your baby boy.