play

someone asked me once:

why do you play like this, why

did you not leave it to children

and remember that you have a

certain elevated place now and must

put away the things of your youth?

and i could not answer him with

any honesty except with a shrug

and a blush of shame and i'm sure

my silence was the answer he wanted

or expected

the way some teachers, who question their

own life choices and are soured by them,

can turn on their students with a maligning

condescension that relieves their dismal

self loathing, at least for a bitter moment

and after some time of reflection and

reconsidering, of probing my intentions

and giving due consideration to his

inquest and feeling generally bad about myself

i went outside and breathed in the air

and i awoke day after day and kissed my wife

and embraced our children; fed our dogs and

went to work and watched television and

wept over the loss of a brother and laughed

to myself about something that was not funny

and i bled from the prick of a splinter

and i sweated when the gas tank got too low

miles from town and i called my mother to

wish her happy birthday and i got angry

and then remembered i'd forgotten something

and the world contracted upon me in a sudden

breath and i was crushed by the weight of it

until my wife said she loved me and then it all

expanded again, with a new knowledge and

with a new wonderment and with a different shade

and the question of the man went from me for months and

then came back, as if it were something placed in a bottle

tossed to sea, only to return in its glass chamber sparkling,

the reflection from the sun burning my eyes so that i had to

pick it up and remove the message

why do you play like this, why

did you not leave it to children

and remember that you have a

certain elevated place now and must

put away the things of your youth?

it accused me once more

and pocketing the question i went for a

walk and tread upon dirt roads and paved

roads in the rain and snow, the wind in my

face and at my back, the swell of a storm

that pushed me into the woods

i found a structure, a form, made of you

and others like you, all of whom in arm and facing

each other in such a way that felt familiar

a form, this structure, of a power and understanding

that willed me to rejoin

in a dark room, with a stage, and lit in such a way that

felt real. you and your faces and your lives

and your work and your children and your pets

and your schooling and your tears and your fears

and your bleeding and your laughing

you and you all, like me and with me,

knowing that i do this as you do this,

not for a way to run toward youth again

and leave behind life but rather to

face life head on and seek truth

the form we make in this place

in this dark room with its lights

and its make believe and with our

voices not our own in costume

is a way that we understand

i play

because

i live