Dancing With Giants

When I was a child, I danced under the piers
unafraid and heedless of my mother’s admonitions,
a stripling among giants
that held up the world on their wooden shoulders,
a porous shield against sun and rain,
just me and barnacles and the green slime of moss,
textures foreign to my landlocked childhood.

If I stood still fish would gather,
mistaking my spindly legs for posts,
sniffing, if fish can sniff at the hair on my legs.
I would laugh and they would flee,
each of us with an adventure to tell
when we found ourselves home.

There was a purity then, every emotion distinct
one from the other,
never mixed, never diluted or conflicted,
a purity lost with age and experience,
lost, I assumed forever
until that first kiss reminded me
that one can be the best of a child
still.

About this poem

Sometimes it happens like that, still.

Tom