Member Poem

There is an art to being a child:
to play heedless of consequence,
learn without toil, love
without possession.
Skills we gather, unaware
how fine a garment
we are weaving for ourselves.

Yet, at the moment of perfection
childhood becomes an old shirt
that no longer fits, stained
with poster paint and play-dough.
Embarrassed to be seen in it
we can’t wait to put on cooler clothes,
anoint ourselves initiates
of a world we don’t yet understand.
How comical it seems, from here,
this casting off of consummate childhood
for cack-handed adolescence:
neither one thing nor the other.

There is a point to this –
the world cannot be run by children –
but it still hurts to see
the beauty of the life we threw away
only when we are, once and for all
quite different people.
What use then for a worn-out shirt
that once belonged to someone else?