• Thomas
    By Terry Busby
    AKA Mr. B

    Once on this strange little world where we stay,
    Lived shy young Tom Tooly who never did play.
    At 6 years of age, no friends he had ‘round.
    No dogs and no cats, none could be found.
    With short dark brown locks and expressionless stare,
    He lived life, quite royal, in a beautiful lair.
    Its walls were built high with a gothic-like style.
    So famous it was, people knew it for miles.
    The Tooly estate had many a maid
    For the lord and the lady were very well paid.
    Many people there are, or so I am told,
    Would live such, post haste! Until they are old.
    But little Tom Tooly was different from others,
    For he was ignored by his father and mother.
    His parents thought money more precious than he.
    He might as well drown in a ship wreck at sea.

    Alone he sat in his luxurious room,
    But to him it felt like a dead lonely tomb.
    Tom would just sit and feel quite forlorn.
    He’d stare out his window and continually mourn.
    The seasons would change from summer to spring
    But he would just stare at the fluttering wings
    Of the tiniest birds to the largest in sky
    And thought to himself “Well why can’t I?”
    Till one day he rose to his tiny young feet,
    And stood on the top of the old window seat.
    He leaped out the window and fell on his head.
    Marked on the ground where the cobble ran red.

    Thomas awoke to a startling sight.
    For all that he saw was wholly pure white.
    From the ground to the sky to the horizon abroad,
    Nothing but white. It was very unflawed.
    Tom rose to his feet and started to walk
    On the empty white ground as solid as rock.
    He went on for what felt like a mile
    But it seemed that nothing had changed in a while.
    True he had walked that whole time since he stood
    Though no distance he went; it did him no good.
    Not darkness, no sun, no figure at all
    This place Tom was at hadn’t even a wall.

    He sat where he was and started to cry.
    While thinking of times that had passed him by.
    He thought his birthdays, each worse than the last
    And thought of his parents and figured “Alas,
    If they do not love me; won’t even be near,
    Then this is my home! I shall stay here.”
    When all of a sudden, in front of his toes,
    A small sprout popped up and gradually rose.
    It twisted and curled for three foot and a half
    Then dried and fell over; a lovely gnarled staff.
    Thomas gazed down at the curly brown stick
    Bent down, picked it up and gave it a flick.
    With a ringing sharp whistle and swoosh in the air,
    The stick glowed dark green; Thomas knew this was rare.
    He let go of the branch and took a step back,
    It fell to the ground and quickly turned black.

    Too strange it was that Tom could just look,
    At the pulsing black staff that formed and odd book.
    Thomas moved a bit closer and got onto his knees,
    As he picked up the book and started to read
    A wrinkled old page of the strange blackened text
    And it said a few words that left Thomas quiet vexed.
    It said “With the stick, the curled one that glows green,
    You can trace out the life of your wildest dreams.”
    It wiggled a bit and with a puff of black haze,
    Turned back to a stick. Tom was amazed.

    There in his hand, the black changed to green,
    The most beautiful hue Thomas had seen.
    So with a lost stare and fooled looking face,
    Thomas grasped the old branch and started to trace
    A roughly drawn man, down on the white ground.
    With strong inspiration, he made not a sound.
    When young Tom was done, you could tell from his eyes
    That he was quite shocked when the doodle did rise.
    It stood from the ground; the shape was all wrong.
    It waved it’s stick hand and moved right along.
    With the hunch on it’s back and it’s indrawn white dome,
    It walked on for miles in search of a home.
    The doodle kept moving till it went out of sight
    While Thomas stood pale with a mystified fright.
    He stared at the stick with huge disbelief
    Then looked at the nothing and felt some relief.
    For a simple idea struck young Thomas’s mind
    To build his own world that no one could find.

    Tom started by drawing a squiggley square
    Which had a large roof drawn so tender with care.
    Added to that a misshapen door.
    Thomas’s house sit in blissful amour.
    In front of his home, a white picket fence
    With a wobbly old gate drawn carefully hence.
    The whitest of trees Tom drew on his lawn
    Just like back home before he had gone.
    So lovely a rose traced; so white as the snow,
    That Tom drew twelve more to ease any woe.
    The skewed blades of grass grew soft and grew bold
    With no weeds to erase for an endless white hold
    To his happy lone yard in this vastly huge field
    That holds him quite captive, eternally sealed.

    Thomas sat back and gazed at his work,
    Smiled and said with the tiniest smirk
    “This will do fine. I’m finally done,
    So now for some neighbors so I can have fun!”
    Tom started by sketching out houses galore.
    Then finally wrapped up and said “Later some more;
    As for now, I think that some friends I will draw
    To live in the homes, like the ones that I saw
    In the place where I lived from the window up high
    But this time the people will not pass me by.”
    With that he lifted his glowing green branch
    The one that when used, tended to blanch.

    First Thomas drew two young little boys
    Who loved to play with speedy car toys.
    Next he traced out a silly young girl;
    One with a passion for shiny white pearls.
    A girl with a bike and a boy with a dog,
    Even a dreamer who sat on a log.
    Young Mister Tooly did draw on for hours
    With his awesome and mystical, strange drawing powers.
    Tom kept up his work till it should have been night
    But of course there’s no change in a world fully white.

    When he was done with his friends all around
    He went to his home and he sat on the ground.
    He looked to the sky, as pale as could be,
    And started to think about eternity
    Spent in this endless, expansive, washed plane
    When out of nowhere, it started to rain.
    Thomas was shocked, was really confound
    By the strangely odd color that splashed without sound.
    The drops were as blue as a calm valley lake
    But noiseless they were, not a sound they did make.
    Thomas looked out and to his surprise
    As the rain fell, mountains did rise.
    They grew from the ground, the purely vast land,
    To towering heights. They were wonderfully grand.
    Once again, a new color they took;
    Brown as the cover of an old aged book.
    The blue of the water painted the sky.
    Thomas, amazed, let out a sigh
    As he witnessed the strangest sight he’d ever seen,
    Blue covered the land and turned white grass to green.
    In a flash, the yellowest star,
    Gave the land life from so very far.

    One by one the droplets seized fall,
    Leaving the world in a passive, calm lull.
    But a color was missing, bolder than rest
    Important in life, but considered a pest
    By little Tom Tooly who uncomfortably thought
    It’d be out of place; exist it should not.
    Thomas stood tall and stretched out an arm
    Smiled and said with the joyous filled charm
    “I finally feel happy, I have friends at last!
    This will be better than my drab, lonely past.
    I will stay here. I don’t want to go back.
    I can make what I want, I will draw what I lack!
    A father and mother who will always be there!
    Right by my side; every moment we’ll share.
    Now, thought, I think I have had quite a day
    So I’ll rest in my house, until I can play.”
    There Thomas stays in his sketchy domain
    Living his life, ageless, ne’er to complain.

    But waiting in our world, the one where we stay,
    Are Thomas’s parents by bed where he lay.