When you were a child,
How did you play?
Recall the smell of play.
Its delicious tastes.
Remember your heart
In your ears, the steady
Pulse of white noise.
How exciting! The feeling
Of surrendering all senses—
Two disembodied eyes.
For that is what you were,
Floating, timeless,
Now. Observing who
You were. You were lost
At play. You weren’t in your
Body! At play, you
Projected dream.
I saw you. I was there
Too. Three, four, five
I dug in the cool West
Virginia soil, finding myself
On the other side
Of walnut roots and
Mouse nests. I didn’t claim
This made any sense!
Medicinal, becoming lost.
They say the soul sits
Just below the belly button,
In front of the spine. This
Core compelled me into the
Warping woods, summer salted
Skies, fluffed rabbits flouncing
Through the clouds, the living
Fingers of trolls excavated
Beneath tree stumps.
Liberated, lost, throwing off
Clothes, stomping naked up
The emerald-cress creek,
Rainbow dace flashing,
Worm toes in the chocolate
Pudding mud, wading
Upstream as the current
Dissolved my footprints,
My penis a witching wand
Dowsing me towards
Source, towards the silver
Spring, towards the gray
Broken limestone trickling
Cold water, dark water
From hundreds of miles
Distant, drank drunk in
Pennsylvania to flow into
The light across my pink
Feet. Oh, water! What
Did you see in the darkness?
I flew there, the crystalled
Grottoes, the braille of
Sinkholes mapping the
Valley floor, and I visited
Every one unchaperoned,
Squeezed through the
Hairline cracks, witnessed
The blind newts, the blue,
Glowing mosses, the colorless
Water in the caverns’ darknesses,
Unseen for five hundred
Million years. Not bad for a
Kid! And do you want to
Know what happened
Next? When I returned—
To my body, I mean—sun-
Burned and smelling of
Catnip and lily pads,
I retraced to discover
That my clothes had been
Stolen! I’m being literal here,
This really happened, and I
Walked back barefoot across
The thistled pastures to
My grandparent’s farmhouse
No longer playful but
Naked as Eve, aware of
My shame, the soul of my
Belly spasmed with sobs.
Oh, little one! This world.
My clothes had been taken
By Jim, a farmhand with five
Young children. He didn’t know.
How could he? My clothes
Were returned. The cruel
Day dispelled, carried down-
Stream to the Shenandoah,
The olivine Potomac, the
Chesapeake Bay and the
Atlantic, until, rising, rising,
It fell once more against
Pennsylvania. It’s hard
Not to take this all
Seriously, isn’t it, to allow
Our clothes to be stolen—
Naked at play without shame.
I’ve never forgotten
How to play. I’ve only
Forgotten, sometimes,
For a little while, where
I go when I’m not here.