When I was younger, I headed to the playground, because I liked the swings.
I liked to believe I was riding a rocket
One with broken wings.
It would shake as it hit the atmosphere
And break as the ground came near
And I’d eject, flying through the sky.
Imagination was my ally.
Explanation played second string
In a world where dreams were king.
On the playground, your eyes could only see
what your imagination said “Let it be!”
And so I spent the days, on the playground swing
In a world where dreams were king.
Then, Imagination lost it’s rank, and sank
When my world grew around me, somehow,
With the importance of the “Here and Now.”
Not for loss, but it seemed best to put to rest
the Rocket Boy’s eyes that saw unseen
The world where dreams were king,
For a world that cues with immediacy
What’s urgent, important and easily held,
What’s heard, and noticed, and missed, and seen and smelled
What’s due, and to, and from, and untrue,
And sharp and hurried, frazzled and worried…
“Things that matter are in sight that’s plain!”
Thus we choose to see only things that… can… be… explained.
And this has merit, as any Rocket Boy can tell.
Surely, a dirty rocket can be a living hell!
“Clean yourself, son,” are words to live by!
And wisdom gained, is life attained.
But wait...
Why do we gravitate... to that which is “explained”?
I confess it does come with ease, to focus only on what one sees.
To move around the dirt that one can feel, down in the sandbox, where one kneels.
Yet, is Faith not the language of Heaven and of Space?
Telling us the stars that we don’t see, are more real and eternal
Than ever we dreamed they’d be?
Is the rocket not meant for flight to these galaxies unseen?
And the mind, which is of course for sight, not also meant to dream?!?
Dear World, I offer this:
Now that I have learned the lessons to manage “here and now”
Oh that you would release your grasp and let me sail, and soar, and rocket past
The backlit night with its diamond stars
Into eternal bright, where the sunlight sings
Where Rocket Boys and dreams are king!
For God himself shouts with twinkle in eye:
“To what extent can you measure Love that’s higher than the sky?
And how will you quantify Mercy that’s wider than a horizon’s line?
My Child!… if you do not give Imagination its wings,
how will Love have the breath with which It sings!?!”
You need another measure of reason if you are to understand
How I dance between the starlit borders
of the purple galaxies I’ve ordered,
How I dodge the comets I have created
with galactic cosmic words
to meet you in the morning…whispers silent… yet still, heard.”
Oh my God, no amount of reason can I use to measure
The One who truly stretches past forever?
I will therefore sing, out here where daylight rings,
on the edge of reason, and what is seen
crying out into eternity
with Faith’s forgotten voice,
“I am one of the Rocket Boys!”
Out here upon the swings, where the sun shines bright…
May I fall into the light!…
Out where dreams are king!
