Hear me, O Lord! Lord of woods and gullies,
Lord of dim and root, how may I find your council?
Nightly, on the green fringe of sleep I seek you,
on the green fringe of life I weep, weep for this child god.
I told them, my brethren selves, O Lord, the true one
resides in youth’s dappled grime, before lust and misgiving.
The true one, of whom we are sprung, in whom we once
rejoiced remains pink and untainted. I told them. Remember.
I told them the child, unbroken, is and forever shall be. For this
I am chided. For this, carted and strapped to a brazen wheel.
For this, forever annulled.
Shunned and bare before the sun, chapped with wind’s
coiled blare, I have come to nothing, daring not and idle. Forgive me.
Lord, I wait for you, abreast your dank throne and darkly,
darkly so. Should I be thus forsaken as from your body grown?
Should I be denied embassy and thrown into sleep
without word, without grace, without the soft touch
of the small hand in which I once held a stone?
Image: Frédéric Perez on Unsplash
Sweet and Bitter Greens 
Powerful all of it. These lines jump out at me:
“Shunned and bare before the sun, chapped with wind’s
coiled blare, I have come to nothing, daring not and idle. Forgive me.”
Yes, childhood, even though my adult self knows was not all good and some downright bad, was a golden time of endless days of exploration, climbing trees, and building mud rivers in the back alley.
Thanks. Yes, I wonder if any of us have lived up to the innocence and wonder of our early child selves. I doubt it, to be honest. I think it is a worthwhile thing to consult with our child selves to regain or a least find solace in that innate “godliness”.
D