By The Road Poem by Seamus O' Brian

Crouched by the gutter guiding with his fingers
Boats made of leaves and grass down streams
Of rainwater, rushing gently past to worlds unknown.
Hoping to be noticed, hungry to be remembered
But the car rushes past, leaving to worlds unknown.

An earthworm wriggles along, struggling for life
In a stream of water he cannot understand.
Fingers from the sky pluck him from the stream
And place, delicately, his wriggling form upon the edge
Of the grass he has known as home.

A boy, forming mud and leaves and grass into the shape
Of some kind of life, wriggles along in a stream of living
He cannot understand. When the screaming has passed,
And the silent tears rolling by have dried and the family
He has known has diverged like the rainwater
into the gutter and the sewer and the sea.

He wriggles along, searching for the shore, grasping
For the family he once called home. Unlike worms, though
Children have hidden within their small hearts little streams
Of strength, rivulets of hope, placed there by fingers in the sky.
So gathering up the splinters of his heart and the shards of his life

The little boy runs.

He runs in the warmth of the sun by the cobalt sea.
He runs through the fields and he runs through the meadows,
Misted by morning and burnished by sunset, chasing
Knights and giants and his little white dog.
He runs through his days and he runs through his years
Hoping to find the worlds unknown, where the edge of the
Grass will welcome him home.

And all through the days and all through the years, the sun still shines
Sometimes through clouds and sometimes fiercely upon his back
While fingers from the sky form the mud and the leaves of his living
And guide him slowly and gently back
to a place that love calls home.

So I will tickle you, my children, and wrestle with you, as the sun
Falls brightly upon our bed these Saturday mornings filled with laughter.
Then I will send you out to the roads and the fields and the meadows
To find the little boys crouching by the road, to find the children holding
The shards of their hopes and the shattered dreams of their little lives
And I will ask you to be for them fingers from the sky.