When I Was A Child

When I was a child

I reasoned that although I was a child

The fact that I was a child

Bore no bearing

On who I was

And I had no concept of becoming

I did not feel like an incomplete soul

I was not waiting to be made whole

I was not enriched by what I stole

Nor depleted by what was stolen

I was not held

Or beheld

I was not emboldened 

Nor beholden

I was me

And I longed, more than anything, to be free

My fantasies were winged things

Wolf-raised loners or kings of the invisible,

My longing was for the infinite

Stretched out for ever before me

Never diluted nor divisible

Risible though they found me

Climbing trees

Scraping knees

Caught in rainstorms

Playing windmills in the breeze

They tried to encage me

But they could not

I would not cease nor freeze

Simon did not say

And I never wanted to adapt

That was pure essence

That which you thought play

I was the skinny, day-dreamy cry-baby kid

I was too sensitive

The teacher told me 

I looked at hawks

In books

Paddled with the other boys in brooks

Put people off by my open hearted sincerity

I clung as tightly to friends as I did to dreams and desires

And thus suffocated the air out of friendships

Quenched fires

And retreated 

Beyond the walls

Within the earth

To the inner life,

Perhaps that is why I write poems

Because beneath the crust, and tectonic, melancholic plates

The magma is still moving

Still flowing