Games Children Play

Aris and Tate

 

The games we played in childhood

made to ready us for our life

The fleet foot breathless soldier

forged to mimic our daily strife

 

These lessons turn round and round

with the sweet spinning of a child

Taught so that we may never forget

to make a man of the meek and mild

 

Somewhere between the child and man

we forget sometimes the reason

Why children love to play these games

as varied as each new season

 

The happy chimes of the baseball field

like notes from far flung rain

Carry us back to our childhood

reliving the laughter and the pain

 

The giddy chatter across the field

lofted high on the drifting breeze

Echo our life's fear of failure

wishing, if only time could freeze

 

We find much more when we lose

of just what we are made of

Discovering the test of character

that all good men so love

 

In life it's not the ones who condemn

nor win most times they play

It's friends who forgave our weakness

whose spirits echo through our day

 

 Aris

Author's Note

Haven't we all thought back to the moment we were up to bat?
With the weight of the world on us we then struck out.
Baseball is the national sport here. It is the only sport to have a commissioner all powerful who is in charge of guarding the integrity of the game. In 1919 the first commissioner Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis was elected to the lifetime post to combat the cheating that the White Sox had done in the world series. Even though all were acquitted he banned them all from the game for life saying "No player who gambles on the game of baseball or sits in conference with others who do and does not tell his franchise will ever play the game again." He added "What these men have done is to plant a doubt in the minds of every school boy who ever looked up to them in awe. Baseball the great leveler of men from all walks of life. They have violated the founding principle upon which the game is grounded. Forever taking away the innocence that comes of a child's sense of fair-play"!
The White Sox were for years then after refered to as the Black Sox!

Childhood:
Softened by Times consummate plush,
How sleek the woe appears
That threatened childhoods citadel
And undermined the years!
Bisected now by bleaker griefs,
We envy the despair
That devastated childhoods realm,
So easy to repair.

Emily Dickinson

Reviews

[Katie]

The poem was so lovely and brought back such awesome memories from my childhood that sometimes you forget or just do not think about. The pictures are so sweet too.

[Star Wolf]

This brings back all sorts of positive memories.

[Tina Kline]

Those lost childhood years, how we often think back to them.
A lovely poem to those times.

[Sunflower/Sara Kendrick]

Emily Dickinson is one of my favorite ones also..Great write that makes some valid points about childhood training and life...Keep the creative pen flowing..Sunflower..

[Seashell]

This is so nostalgic and makes me remember the playground and all the fun and fears that were present. You never think at the time that you will one day remember and pause to think about a certain split second happening...when you are young. All of a sudden....it's all we do...reminisce.

Thanks for sharing your talent once again dear friend.
Babs xx

[Lena M. P.]

Didn't we have fun, playing in the sun. The scrapes and fall, the tears and laughter, all making us who we are today. Thanks for the reminder!

[Ruth]

Ahh, yes, the innocence of childhood, Tate, I miss that! lol This is nostalgically charming! xx

[just rose.]

I'm interested in the times from childhood that stay with us. Even coming from a rotten one, and even though I didn't like baseball, there was a certain summery endlessness to these rituals that made you feel like life would be ok. And the metaphors certainly stay.

[Alicante lullaby]

wonderful...your last stanzas always linger in air..
child play indeed is a way to make us getting intimate with losing and to make us realise''not failure but low aim is crime''..

[An owl on the moon]

This is a simply stunning write.. You create a feeling for what was... childhood memories of the richest joy.. And then let us see where we are now.. As we grow up. Oh what we can lose if we aren't aware of what's happening. May we find ways to reflect back often on the simplicity of life.