Too Playful

31 August 2022

https://poems.culturing.net/2022/08/too-playful/

The poem grows from the same place
as child's play, the soil of human possibility.
What can we be? Maybe doctors or lawyers
or dragon-slayers, or maybe plants
or gemstones or rye. But children
grow older, and most forget play,
though its lessons stay with us, for
we are our playthings, we are what we play,
and at one time you knew that.
I write to remind you, though it is no use,
because patients are sick, because clients are angry,
and dragons are burning down villages, but you
are too busy to play with me. If only you knew
that your play is play too, we'd grow wiser together,
and maybe you'd learn about truth
and its too playful hold over you.