I grew up
fifty years away from here,
almost three thousand miles in the past,
in an age and place
with different hopes and hurts,
buried deep inside a world that never feels
on fire
in my memories
the way my children’s future
feels on fire
in my fears.
I struggle to connect my thens and nows.
But just today I heard
the joy
of children in the courtyard,
and I marveled that,
even all the way across
a continent of miles
and a half a century of time,
the kids
still cover up their eyes
and count in questionable darkness,
down
from
ten
to
one,
then charge into a land
of quickly hidden friends,
with bellowed warnings
taken whole-cloth from my youth
of
“Ready or not!” and
“Here I come!”
