Too Late To Be Children And Play Poem by RIC BASTASA

HE HAD BEEN too serious
laughter is seldom and it is a tool only when badly needed.
This and that.
Hands too busy for all the days of its fingers.
The mind is sun and moon. Routine. Categories.
Structured lives, like city buildings with all the rules
of This and That.
The House comes. The car invades. Meetings are like filled calendars.
Nothing to interpolate like a picnic, a river sail,
a beach comb, a mountain trek,
all days are Mondays. Nothing to Friday
Sundays are stripped of their holy vestments.

IT is too late. It is late in the evening and we have ceased to be
children going home after a play
in order to pray beside
Mother, who had long been dead
and buried without much
needed ceremony.

Now, it is dark forever.