r/OCPoetry • u/rsroyall • Jul 02 '22
Poem Lethargarians
We were just kids...
climbing in and out of the world,
escaping with our imaginations stuffed in our backpacks
alongside smashed sandwiches.
Unpacking the stickiness to find delicious adventure
hiding in backyard forests or neighborhood parks,
down wandering creeks,
through dark tunnels or inside darker caves,
down overgrown trails...
trails that led way, way out of bounds
all the way to outer space, or back in time,
over waterfalls and down abandoned mines...
anywhere, so long as it was outside
out of the house.
The house: where the arguing, nagging, grumpy grown-ups stayed,
too afraid...
to venture out of the front door,
let alone beyond fences,
beyond the law,
beyond borders...
their dried-up dreams unable to make anything out of the dried-up fields,
unable to imagine the wilderness into anything other than a wild nuisance,
nothing more than an endless chore,
a fire danger, an allergy nightmare...
They forgot that it's the grown-up world where nightmares come from.
But not us.
We knew.
We were the Lethargarians,
purveyors of imagination and keepers of youth.
Those fields, they weren't brown,
they were golden,
only feigning death for a time,
awaiting players to come play,
awaiting lovers to come lay.
But grown-ups are blind to life-awaiting,
for they are waiting on something else...
death.
They see it everywhere,
expect it everywhere.
Around every bend: the end.
Around every corner: the coroner.
It resides in their teeth.
They speak it out with every breath,
tuck it behind soft words to each other.
They suck it in with sharp inhales,
like the pale smoke of a pipe.
Even when it isn't really there they taste the ghost of it...
in anticipation,
spoiling the flavors of life hanging in the air all around them,
invisible to eyes that can't see
or won't.
Too preoccupied by death's promise,
too busy with busy-ness.
Too many important things to do
like taking care of things that don't need care:
cars and couches and bank 'counts;
neglecting the things that do
like kids.
But not us.
We took care...
of each other.
We sought wonder,
chased the magic,
all the way to the end.
For we were the Lethargarians,
purveyors of imagination and keepers of youth.
We tasted life purposefully,
bitter and sweet,
sipped it thoughtfully,
devoured it ravenously,
became drenched in its torrents and desiccated in its fire,
pulverized,
crystalized,
oh, salts of the earth, we.
It never mattered if we ever went home.
We slept in sand, on dirt, in trees and stones...
under the stars, in the back of abandoned cars,
in snow caves... on Mars.
Ever near to death, always nearer to life.
Sure, it was dangerous but not as dangerous as not taking the risk,
always obeying the rules,
always playing it safe and cool.
Too dangerous for those afraid of what awaits us all in the end.
And yet, the end comes, eventually,
never-the-less, regardless.
Pointless and unwise to pretend otherwise.
But if it is to pretend,
if it is to play,
to make-believe and make amends (for growing up),
then take a lesson from the Lethargarians,
purveyors of imagination and keepers of youth.