They Never Left: Stanza 1 Poem by gordon francis

As a child
I thought of nothing
but childish things,
never forced
to think of the future,
always living
a day-to-day life,
playing,
schooling,
working in the woods
with axe and saw
and heaving piles of wood
onto tender muscles,
lugging it up through
the man-trodden
boy-trodden
paths
of my fairy-tale forest,
my playground
of the imagination,
filled with delights of
Cowboys,
Indians,
Cops,
Robbers,
Witches,
Killers,
Lovers,
all hidden
just around a bend in the path
or sucked-in-sideways
behind the furthest tree.