Growing Up

The sweet faced baby,

eager for life.

How I wish you could have kept on living such a life of pure joy.

But no on can.

Language comes to us,

and with it lies and threats,

cruelty and disappointment.

You walk,

and those steps lead you outside the shelter of your home.

To keep the joy of childhood you would have to die as a child,

or live as one,

never becoming a man,

never growing.

So I can grieve for the lost child,

and yet not regret the good man braced with pain,

and riven with guilt.

Who yet was kind to me and many others,

and whom I loved,

and whom I almost knew.

Glad he was a man,

no longer a sweet loving child.

There was no doubt he was a man,

and yet he was a good man somehow.