do you remember

the days
of grilled cheese and muddy shoes,
of simple joy tracked in through the back door

when your mother's call to dinner
was the most pressing obligation of the day—
even halting the unrelenting advance
of those scurvy pirates
(a temporary parley)

when sticks and stones
were a garden's gold and rubies,
freely transformed
into dragons and damsels,
only as dangerous as the flames of your imagination

what has happened
to the sticks and stones,
those simple symbols of creativity?
now you wield them along with words,
those double-edged swords
more dangerous than any dragon
(though of course they will never hurt
you)

what has happened
to the flavor of grilled cheese?
it only tastes now like
greasy toast and
preservatives,
no longer a reminder of your mother's buttery love

what has happened
to the irresistible appeal of mud?
left unsplashed in the yard and
shaken, oh so carefully,
off your shoes—
no place for the messy sort of joy
in your white, white house

what has happened,
that you can no longer see
the striking beauty
in a mud puddle?


nothing has happened
(meaning everything, of course)
nothing but the slow march of time,
an advance that even
a call from your mother could not halt


are the colors of your soul
too bright to blend in with the crowd—
so you bleach them out
to live in black and white?

are your subtle imperfections,
tiny pushpin holes and bumps in the plaster,
too irregular to treat as signs that
here, indeed,
someone has lived –
why do you sand and paint them over
in shame?

nothing in nature is glossy,
perfect, smooth,
unworn.
those are the man-made
mechanizations
of cold civilization.


what, my child,
has happened

to you?