No Age Limit

"Aren't we a little old to be playing in the ball pit?"

"The fact that you phrased that as a question means you do not know the answer.  And if you don't know the answer, then to me that means the answer is no."

"Jackson Craine, I am serious."

"You're always serious, Steve.  That's the problem.  You need to learn to be less serious sometimes."

"Jackson, people are going to stare at us."

"I should hope so, it would be a shame for them to miss out on our combined attractiveness."

"Jack..."

"Steve, listen.  If people stare at us, that is their business.  And that's something that they are going to do no matter what.  This is a ball pit.  This is a safe space.  This is harmless, innocent fun."

"I don't understand."

"Look, I can't even hold your hand in public if you're afraid of people looking at us funny.  Because unfortunately, that's the way it's going to be.  So you have to get used to people looking at us.  And I can't think of a better way than this."

"So this is what, immersion therapy?"

"Think of it like a vaccine.  A vaccine exposes you to the problem - such as people staring - in a harmless form - such as having a blast while playing in the greatest invention of humankind, the plastic ball pit – and builds up your defenses so that the time the real issues begin, you'll be ready for it."

"I don't know about this, Jackson..."

"Of course you don't, you're always worried about what people will think so you never let yourself play in a ball pit."

"I thought this wasn't about the ball pit."

"Are you kidding me? Everything is about the ball pit!"

The World Was Made

They say that ages ago, before the world was made, before the people walked and ran and danced upon the earth, Maple stood by herself on the bare earth.  There was nothing by her, there was no one anywhere, and all she could do was just stand there, for there was no where to go and no one to know and no thing to see.

Tired of her isolation, she reached into her branches and broke off a bud and held it tightly in her hands until it formed hard and smooth.  She took a leaf and wrapped it around the top and she blew on it to dry it and make a cap.  She then took the acorn and pressed it gently into the ground not far away.  

Time went on, and soon Oak sprang from where the acorn had been placed.

Brother Oak, Maple had said, it is good that you have come to join me.  For I have been alone and now have a brother.

Sister Maple, said Oak who recognized Maple, I am glad to join you. But why are there no others?

Maple told him, There have never been any others. I have been alone. Now I have a brother and my brother has me. Is this not enough?

Oak pondered. No it is not enough. It is good, but it is not enough.

What then? Maple asked him.

There should be things on the ground, Oak told her. More like us. And some should also walk from place to place and some should dig into the earth.

Yes, said Maple. And there should be things in the sky as well. Creatures that soar and take rest in our branches and creatures that hover and dart between us.

Oak agreed with his sister, but he wondered how this could be.  The sun shines and all day, and nothing keeps the sky in place.

Maple worried about this and told him, Nothing holds the earth in place either.  If you could hold the earth in place, I could hold the sky in place.

So Oak took many of his leaves, tore them up and threw them into the air.  They scattered and came to rest on the ground, where they sprang up plants and grasses and flowers to hold the earth in place.

Satisfied that the ground would stay, Maple reached her arms to the sky and molded the air into giants.

Giants of air, she told the giants, you must hold the sky in place.  You must reprimand the sun when it is too hot and you must bring the oceans to the earth when it is too dry.

And the giants held the sky and the grasses held the ground.

And Maple threw her seeds to the winds where they grew wings of feathers to soar through the sky and wings of glass to dart between the trees.  And Oak dropped his seeds to the ground where they grew legs to walk from place to place and claws to dig into the earth.

And from these all creatures great and small and all plants of every color grew and were born.

The Poet's Diary

7:00 am: Woke up. Brushed teeth, shaved.

7:05 am: Fell back asleep.

8:14 am: Woke up. Showered, put on bathrobe. Went downstairs. Brewed coffee. Waited.

8:29 am: Poured coffee, sat down in chair on the porch.  Watched the birds.

8:34 am: Saw a cardinal. Bright red, bigger than some of the others.  It's a very lovely color.

8:35 am: Realized that 'cardinal' both describes the bird and the color. Wondered for a while which terminology came first.  Both seem equally likely.  The vivid hue would be the perfect way to describe the bird, despite the females not sharing it.  But the bird would also be the perfect way to describe the color, since nature makes it almost unique to the bird.  An interesting question indeed.

8:38 am: Prominent bishops in the Catholic church are also called Cardinals.  This is getting confusing.

8:40 am: A gold finch flew by.  I don't see many of those out here any more.

8:45 am: Cardinal can also refer to directions and numbers. Threw coffee mug at bird in frustration.

8:46 am: Went inside to get more coffee in a different mug.  Made note to buy another.

8:50 am: Got dressed in comfortable working clothes. Dark to hide ink stains.

9:00 am: Sat down to write first poem of the day.

9:30 am: The paper is blank. Can't stop thinking about cardinal.

9:33 am: Found cardinal in dictionary.  "of prime importance; chief; principle." That doesn't help at all.

10:03 am: Gave up on both poem and cardinal.  Needed inspiration.  Put on hat and jacket, walked to library.

10:44 am: Found book by Billy Collins. Good poet. Writes very naturally.

11:30 am: Read entire book.  Very short.  Very depressing.  Not used to Collins being so sad, not that you could often describe him as happy.  Still can't think of poem.

11:40 am: Went for walk to be inspired or to clear my head.  Honestly, either works.

11:45 am: Saw a cardinal. Now they're just mocking me.

12:15 pm: Stopped at a cafe for a scone and some black tea. The poet's natural habitat.

12:22 pm: Inspiration strikes.  Wrote poem.  Page and a half long.  Kept writing and writing.

12:24 pm: Put away notebook. Kept thinking about poem. Finished my scone.  Cinnamon Chip.  Delicious, but dry.

12:29 pm: Left cafe. Something nagging mind.

12:35 pm: Decided to have second look at poem.  Took out notebook.  It's bright red.  Contemplated.

12:37 pm: Decided it was not quite the right shade of red to be Cardinal.  Opened notebook.

12:40 pm: Read and reread poem.  Not so sure about it now.  Put notebook away.
12:44 pm: Headed home.
12:46 pm: Stopped at a pond on the way.  Admired its natural beauty. Thought about poem.

12:54 pm: Took out notebook again.

1:04 pm: I hate this poem.

1:05 pm: Tore out of notebook. Crumpled. Lit crumple on fire. Threw in pond. Headed home.

1:29 pm: Got home, sat down in front of paper.

1:30 pm: Previous poem was a masterpiece. What was I thinking.

1:34 pm: Tried to remember it and rewrite it.

1:46 pm: Wrote this instead.  

On Dreams

"I had a dream about you this morning," I told you as I peeled an orange carefully above the sink.

You raised your eyebrows at me over your tea.  "Did you? What sort of dream?"

"It was the sort of dream where you're half awake and half asleep and occasionally wake up during it only to fall asleep again and continue." I broke off a bit of the rind, sniffed it, and put it in my mouth to chew.  "You know that sort of dream, right?"

You smirked. "No, no no. I mean, what sort of dream nudge wink."

I spat the chewed rind into the sink and finished peeling the rest. "No, it was not that sort of dream." I put the peeled orange in a bowl and washed my hands.  "A one track mind, I tell you."

"Mm, that's a pity," you said, laughing softly as you took another long sip of tea.  "Well then, what was this dream about?"

"I don't recall," I said, and I moved around the counter to sit down next to you at the table.

"You don't recall?"

"No, I don't recall."

"Uh huh." You nodded abstractly.  "Well this has been an enlightening conversation and I am better for having it."

"Well, bits and pieces here and there." I pulled off a piece of the orange, ate it in one bite and wiped my hands on my pants.

"Go on," you urged.

"Well," I said after swallowing another piece.  "There's not much.  There might have been police.  Or a building, maybe a house? The color blue."

"You're right, that's not much."

"But I think I remember this bit with a photograph.  You were showing me this photograph, and I asked you who was in it.  And you said you were in it, but I couldn't see you, or really anyone in it.  Then you showed me another and said you were in it, but there were two people in it, and I couldn't figure out who either of them were, but I was too embarrassed to ask which was you." I put two more pieces of orange in my mouth and chewed them with more attention than I would have given them individually.

"I see," you said. "I wonder what it means."

"I dunno," I told you. "Been thinking about that.  Maybe it means that I really don't know a single thing about you."

You drained the rest of your tea, a sizable amount. "Ahh, everyone puts too much stock in dreams and their meanings. Don't think too much about that."

I looked at you, taking in your features.  "Well, you asked."

You looked at me, your eyes flashing into mine. "You love me, don't you?"

"W-well of course I do," I stammered.

You kissed my cheek. "Then that's all that matters, isn't it?" You stood up and put on your jacket. "I'll see you tonight?"

"Yeah," I said, not sure what to feel.

"Hey, smile!" you told me.  "You could stop traffic with that smile, you know.  I'll see you tonight." And you walked out the door.

Sins and Stages

On Monday, I woke up without you. I showered, running the water a little bit because I remembered you didn’t like to go in unless it had warmed up enough. I made breakfast and set two places. I read all day, looking up every time I thought I heard someone pass the door. Dinner was for two, romantic, candle-lit, rigatoni in meat sauce with sauteed pea pods and an unopened bottle of 2005 Merlot. I went to bed and fell asleep waiting for you. I dreamed myself in your arms with nothing between us.

On Tuesday, I couldn’t stand the thought of you. I picked up all the pictures I had of us, stuffed them into a mason jar and lit the crumpled mess on fire. As it burned, I just kept thinking how much better off I was, how I never needed you. I told myself that you held me back and now that you were gone I could finally prove how great I was and how everybody loved me and you just prevented me from shining and them from getting closer to me. When the flames settled down, I picked up the jar of ashes and melted plastic and threw it at the television. I sat down and cried until I passed out.

On Wednesday, I tried to think of how to change things. How it could have been different. I wished I had your grace and your charm. I resented that you had been so good at everything and so good to me while I was awful and spiteful to you. I wondered if I might have been half the person you were, might I have been able to keep this from happening. And then I looked through all the things you left behind. I watched your movies, hoping something could take my mind off of this. I put your Nintendo up for sale online.

On Thursday, I didn’t get up at all. I hardly moved all day, not leaving the bed, looking up at the ceiling, wishing for the cold or the numbness of death. I didn’t care that I stained the pillows as I drank the rest of the Merlot by myself. I didn’t check to see if anyone bid because I didn’t really care if they had. I drifted in and out of sleep. The awful dreams weren’t enough to make me get up.

On Friday, I waited an acceptance that will never come.

Every Day's the Fourth of July

Sometimes I wonder what people think of me as they pass by. I wonder what that little child with his ice cream pop thinks I am doing. I wonder what thoughts I cause in the people who speed swiftly down the street on bicycles, coupes, inline skates, what images I conjure in the minds of poets who might be strolling down the street, looking for a muse, a simple idea or picture or comment that might place one word firmly behind the next, and then more words following in a line or a stanza or a battalion of rhetorical soldiers.

Perhaps they look at me and see me at face value, just a frail old man sitting on a bench, jotting in a notebook while feeding pigeons on the sidewalk that leads into the entrance of the park. Perhaps they try to suppose my life story, my circumstances, maybe thinking my wife could have died years ago from terminal brain cancer, my children moved away to the corners of the world, the notebook filled with all the words I would have said to my wife, the pigeons filled with all the bread I would have given to my children.

I look at the pigeons, I look at the people, and I can't help but smile a bit. And I look down into my notebook, and my smile turns to a grin as I write the words I've been waiting my whole life to put down:

“Phase One Complete.”

“Delta Strike is Go.”

The Magic of Childhood

Like most people my age, my childhood ended when I found out Santa Claus was real.  I think it hit me harder than it hit most people I knew.  Maybe because I was the youngest of my friends.  I just wasn’t equipped to handle the harsh truth of Santa Claus and what that means.

It happened when I was six years old.  I woke up in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve to hear a loud clatter rising from the rooftop.  More sounds followed: my parents shuffling from their room, scraping from the chimney, a heavy thud from the fireplace, and the muffled tone of my mother and father talking.  You’re just dreaming, I told myself. Go back to sleep.  And I would have, but then I realized mother and father’s voices were accompanied by a third.  It was deep… almost downright jolly.  I knew right away that I had to investigate.

When I climbed downstairs I could hardly believe my eyes.  My own parents, who had for years told me that they bought me all of my presents every single year, stood helping an enormous man in a red suit unload a bag full of boxes. I wasn’t upset because mother and father had lied to me. Well, maybe a little bit, but for me, the hardest part was that I finally knew we didn't live in a world governed by observable laws.

I burst into tears, and the adults turned to look. My mother gasped, my father shook his head, and Santa looked away, as if he had seen this too many times.  Mother softly tried to comfort me, but the questions I kept asking just got harder and harder for her to answer.

I suppose I was being naïve to believe that matter could neither be created nor destroyed, or that the earth orbited the sun due to the sun's greater mass and gravitational pull. But when she told me that the stories were true, even all powerful genies and the chariot that towed the sun, I cried for hours. It was childish, sure, but I just wasn't ready to learn that I could save the life of a fairy just by believing in it enough, and if it touched me I could just think happy thoughts and fly through the stars and straight on until morning.

But again, I was only six years old. Mother made me swear not to tell my brothers about Jack Frost and wood nymphs until they were old enough to find out for themselves.  It’s for their own good, she’d told me. And she was probably right.  How could a three-year-old sleep if he knew about the boogeyman or alien abductions. These things are big, and children are impressionable. So you tell a kid that a rainbow is just an illusion created by refracted sunlight to keep him from searching for gold and getting mauled by a leprechaun.

When I have kids, I'm sure I'll take great lengths to hide the magic beans that grow stalks high above the clouds to the land of giants. But their questions won’t be easy. I don't know how I'll explain thunder without telling them about the angels going bowling or lightning without worrying them about Zeus or Thor striking them down at the slightest provocation. Life would just be simpler without them having to use mirrors to check around corners for basilisks or gorgons. I wish that could be the case.

I wonder if I could use this to my advantage. If I envisioned it hard enough, who knows? I could be able to create a new world for them. A new world where the things I believed in as a child were true - conversion and conservation of energy, a light speed that nothing could surpass, a recordable cause for every effect. Maybe, just maybe, somewhere there could be a universe where life finds a way to adapt and change and pass on traits in response to natural causes rather than the inscrutable whims of  jealous and petty gods.  Somewhere out there is a world that is billions of years old instead of a mere six thousand, in a universe that can be explored and known through careful study and reason.

Heh, listen to me, I must sound like a little kid with a storybook, don't I?  Sorry, I guess all that stuff is still pretty fantastical.  Wishful thinking.  I guess I get carried away with my imagination sometimes, just wishing that the world was a little less magical.