“Childhood”

All revisit the
sandboxes of their youth,
be it in
poptarts or
handsurfing out car windows,

but there is
still the problem of
knowledge
and how to forget
what ripped
childhood from our
fingers.

The mind is a mysterious,
acerbic place,
and could we
unremember, we might,
to fly kites
without the whisper
of Franklin,

or build dams with
dirty hands
and no Pastuer
preaching cleanliness,

or think that girls
are icky
and boys all muddy creatures,
no hormones
eroding those illusions
like sandstone and
breakers,

to view the world as
a great mystery
without the textbook
of
quantum mechanics
to twist the conundrum
in further knots
(and a dead cat’s a
dead cat, stupid).

We all revisit the
skinned knees
of childhood
with the placebos
and bright bandages
of an adult life,

where no balm comes
for the wars of wisdom
and experience,
except to say
the night was winking
full of stars,
where clouds now pass
across the
sky.

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