The Secret Cartography Of Debden Poem by Fred Rik Kesner

"The Secret Cartography of Debden"

The exercise book was a shallow grave
where a boy first buried the things he gave
to a room that traded his grief for cheer,
spilled with the gin and the holiday beer.
"Our Phillip's been writing, " the mother said,
and turned the lights on inside his head,
leaving him small in the grammar-school coat,
with a fistful of lines stuck tight in his throat.

But a boy's best friend is the dirt he keeps.
The records show where the shadow sleeps:
He did not run to the African ports,
Or lose his name to the parish courts;
He took the boundaries, the broken fence,
And built a wall out of permanence.

The hand that held the hidden pen
Became the ruler of local men,
Guiding the school at the edge of the lane,
Fighting the state for the right-of-way train.
He stepped from the page to the heavy loam,
And turned his exile into a home.

Let the archives say that the ledger cleared:
The boy who was mocked is a man revered.
The notebook is closed, and the fields are deep,
And the best of his verses are his to keep.






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