Lost Childhood

I love to run across the twilit sand
In bare feet and ragged jeans;
To feel the sun on my bare back as I sit
On the polished rocks of Wild Cove.
The salty spray, the smell and sound of the ocean,
In clear lakes, I used to swim;
This world I lived in.

A doorless cabin on a mountain or an island,
Bright stars and the new moon rising,
A grove of spruce.
To climb with the wind in the boughs of a white pine.
Pitch on my fingers.
Sun-warmed moss after a calm canoe;
I remember.
Summer nights are warm.

Crystal snow, the northern lights,
Running through familiar woods,
Nobody knows
This world I lived in.
Then torn, ripped ragged from this beauty, blue and green.
Suddenly made to live in a city.
Live?
Hard pavement after pine needles,
Crowds and smog and noise,
My heart can't breathe.
A sea of unnatural squares against a yellow sky.
Why?

Four years made me forget
The deep richness of the north and Newfoundland.
A city can be enjoyable
After much heartsickness and brainwashing,
But not the same.
I become stagnant, mechanical;
I pass the time.
Waiting.

The End.