M. Kaul

I met a sweet, angelic boy in San Francisco.

His smile was a fountain of spontaneity, a riot of innocence,

He moved in spurts of speed punctuated with sudden stops,

Mischief lurked deep in his face, half hidden by sly charm,

He seemed always amused and flirtatious,

Babbling away, unmindful of the company around him,.

Adults around him saw the magic, conscious they could not reciprocate in kind,

They simply bathed in his birth and felt a part of their boyhood revive,

Wondering if growing up has been all that fun.

What are his plans they sometimes wondered,

But the silliness of the question pushed them further into the power of his spell,

Into the beauty of the moment.

Long after the trip I remembered the delicious delight of his smile,

The rhapsody of his dance, the halo of his curved hair.

Nature at our beginning bestows us beauty and bounce

But the culture and the world trades from them for cleverness and material power.

We deny the child in us and create a turmoil in our lives –

Calling it wisdom and hoping to reap a rich harvest from it.