Beethoven's Seventh Symphony In Tingling Glass Shards Poem by Ron Stock

I'm a bruised,48-year old man on a hypnotherapist's couch. We revisit a significant moment when I was seven, and had set fire to cardboard boxes behind a supermarket. My dad promised not to beat me with his razor strap if I told him the truth. I told him the truth and he beat me until blood trickled down the backs of my skinny legs and stained my white socks. I was absolutely livid that he broke his promise. I lost my ability to trust.
One month after this beating another incident; Mom and Dad stabled horses in a barn on an acre of land on the outskirts of Saginaw. Members of the Saginaw Valley Trail Riders Association, they were hosting the club's June ride, and Dad had promised I could ride Thunder, a full-bellied brown mare who rode like a jackhammer. A week before the ride I scurried around like the high-strung, nervous kid I was because I considered it a rite of passage to ride with the grownups. The night before, I polished my saddle and boots, and slept under my smelly horse blanket. At dawn I jumped out of bed and dressed in my black cowboy suit with hat, spurs, sheriff's badge, and pistols. I, was ready to ride.
At our stable we saddled the horses. I was helped up on Thunder. From my perch I gazed over a landscape dotted with oaks and maples. Trailers, from open singles to closed quads pulled up the driveway and men unloaded horses of various colors, shapes, and sizes. Thirty minutes later the Trail Riders were ready to ride. That's when my father walked up and said, "Down, Son, we need your horse." My dad had broken yet another promise. I was crushed and slid from the black leather saddle, but before my feet hit the ground I was told I had to baby-sit a couple of tow-headed five-year-old brats who lived across the road. The twin's parents had seen the activity and wanted to join the fun. The woman of the house would ride Thunder, my horse, while I was saddled with her kids. Something in me snapped. I was given instructions but didn't listen. I wanted Revenge! The Riders filed out the driveway two by two and turned right onto a county road. I watched the billowing trail of gray dust then turned to the two jerks next to me, "Come on! " We followed the Riders until the last pair took another right turn onto another road.
Opposite the turn on the left, nestled among lush trees, was a farmhouse. No one was home. "Follow me! " I trumpeted as I led my gang up the gravel driveway between the white house and old red barn. I was heading for a chicken coop lined with rows and rows of small, inviting windows. At seven I knew the difference between right and wrong. I wanted to do wrong. I picked up the first stone. Broke the first window. We, transformed images of blue sky and white clouds reflected in panes of glass into jagged, star-shaped empty black spaces. I led my gang to the farmhouse, stopped in front of a 4-foot by 6-foot plate glass window, let fly a rock. The sound was awesome. The pane of glass cracked into big pieces that cascaded down and shattered onto the windowsill, the inside floor, and the outside ground below. Broken, medium-sized pieces bounced again and again and smashed into small, tingling jingling shards. It was music to my ears. I walked to a second picture window, a third, a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, and a seventh, just like Beethoven, then we ran like hell. In 1951 my gang and I broke $1,500 worth of windows.