Playtime

image borrowed from bing

Playtime

“And forget not that the earth delights to feel your

bare feet and the wind longs to play with your hair.”

--Kahlil Gibran

Somewhere far away

but perhaps not too far,

lies the magic

land of Mobbsia,

where the children completely rule.

It is a

marvelous dominion where

all the pussycats can fly

and their magnificant

purring fills the

night with sweet feline lullabies.

Everybodything flies there;

horses, bicycles, milkcows,

red wagons, piglets, puppies, frogs,

turtles, jackrabbits too,

but no thing

needs to actually sprout wings,

they/it just leaps

into the honied 

sky & experiences free-flight,

soon soaring over

cottages, gardens, forests,

hills, ponds, & each other.

Sometimes the sky

becomes as busy

as a freeway, as children

zip around on

high, arms out,

scarves fluttering, their joyous screams

& laughter trailing

after. Gosh, there

are two suns, one the

color of strawberries,

the other of

orange juice, and three moons

that all chase

each other across

rainbow-kissed horizons, their backsides

bare, but on

their opposite sides

you will find faces there--

sometimes dogs, sometimes

cats, even pigs 

make guest star appearances. In

Mobbsia it is

always Playtime; monkey-

bar gymnastics, dodge ball, skateboarding,

ping pong, scootering, 

& gang-tag--

always playing very hard, serious

stuff, because each

child understood that

play was essential preparation for

their inevitable departure,

after maturation and

graduation into mysterious adolescence and

other large mysteries. 

Glenn Buttkus

October 2013

Posted over on dVerse Poets Poetics

Would you like to listen to the author read this children's poem to you?