In Their Own World
By John Herlihy

Little children live in their own pure world;
They behave like colorful banners unfurled.
The joyous toddler takes its first tentative step.
Looking at those around, sitting seemingly inept.
He grins, waves his arms, ventures forth, falls;
For a moment he is simply stunned, then bawls.
Cries and entreaties distract him from his misery,
He tries one more time, enchanted in his reverie.
He succeeds, falling blissfully into his mother’s arm,
Who smothers him with kisses as well-earned balm.

Who can capture in maturity as part of their essence,
The sweet, spontaneous flow of childhood innocence.
One by one, we set free the virtues of our chaste youth;
One by one, we adopt vile habits that make us uncouth.
We darken with age collecting the spoils of the grunge,
Accumulating the evils of the world like a porous sponge.
We eventually become a person we don’t even know;
We have surrendered all the blessings God did bestow.
We are left wondering what went wrong, what happened;
All our efforts to boost our ego merely our soul blackened.

Yet hope springs eternal in this world and all is not lost;
We can yet recapture childhood’s purity at some cost.
True when we return to our baby haunts, all seems small;
While a little toy in a child’s hand is big enough to enthrall.
When I smell the smoke of autumn leaves burning with vive,
I smell my father’s smoking pipe, a sweet memory to survive.
What if we could recapture seeing things for the first time?
What if every moment were considered a moment sublime?
To remember children in their own world as one of a kind;
Like kids to create new worlds from the depths of our mind.