Because on a winter day (a warm blustery poem).
Because (the short version).
I sighed, and looked again at the sun. Yes, the sun, the crisp sun and warm air on a winter afternoon,
and I longingly thought of sending them to the telly, which is perfectly fine sometimes, but
something inside called us outside, and we trudged to the forest, where they climbed and built and yelled and peed, and finally we went in, mossy and messy and rich with something good.
Because on a winter day (the long version).
I consider the day’s situation:
here we are, not in a Haitian nation
or warm Caribbean lifeguard station,
-we’re here, Pacific NW winter mountain
On this mountain
I’d like to work for an hour or two
I’ve two or three things I could do
maybe more as I look at my list to review.
-So what to do with my assistants?…
The assistants are age 3 and age 6
learning to read and whittle big sticks
and wrestle me down with giggles and leaps and punches and kicks
-But I need them more sedate at the moment, in this moment,
Not medicate sedate
just need their energies to slow and abate
Before I get irritable and patience might grate.
-So maybe some telly?
Some telly for a minute or four,
for a few hours or several or more?
Could leave them to watch and head for my old office door?
-Or…the sun’s out and the forest calls…
The Trees and the Forest calls
open and free outside of interior walls,
it is winters not summers or falls,
-should go out for ten minutes or less?
‘Or less’ is the part I thought,
but for more time is the fight that they fought.
’Let’s not go in yet, we ought not!’
-was the story they sold me, the one that I bought.
I bought it, they fooled me instead
as they clambered and climbed on a giant tree dead, they did
Living as they should, times dirty upside and back nature kid
-Man, that there’s the afternoon, as the sun sank,
It sank but my shoulders did not,
they ought nought for I invested a lot,
ought not be for naught
They played and they peed and they found what they sought:
-the long siren call of the bluster outside on a short winter day.
