As a boy I dreamed,
without understanding or experience,
riddled with self-doubt and anger,
of what I might become.

I laid on the summer green grass
watching the clear blue sky
darken, becoming first a distant rumble
it seemed, then lightning flashes and hard rain.

Years passed. Some dreams I lost
others, unformed, called me
into difficult and strange worlds,
I did not pursue, disappointed when I did.

I am what I never dreamed
a man living in the clear light of day,
like a boy with flesh alive, senses awakened
infused with clear and distinct memories
from one who has never stopped
wondering who he would become.

I remember bright clouds of summer
billowing across the open sky
above the green grass and blue lake.
I would become, I thought,
another me, find a passageway
to some other person who knew about love
found a way through the deep forest
entered the sacred healing grove.

I laid on summer green grass
baseball and glove by my side
watching deepening cloud forms
pass in endless succession –
spiraling vapors, drifting masses
of white, gray, or dense dark
out of which I thought
I might discern my life’s way.
I saw only the widening open sky
an impenetrable portending veil
through which the future
could not penetrate, could not
reach back through to me
tell me what I wished to know
as I laid there, just a boy.

I had not breathed enough or failed enough;
laughed or died enough.
I look back now through cloud layers
shredded by the passing years.
I can see him still lying on the summer grass
ball and glove by his side.
He is ever watching the summer drifting clouds
squinting, wishing to see who he will become,
trying to find – me.

Seattle, Washington – April 2013

Photo is my own. I found the glove in an antique store several years ago. It is very similar to one I would have worn when I was a boy, playing in the 9-year-old league back in the small Michigan town where I grew up.