A naive innocent

Should I

mourn the child that I was?

Should I look back in dismay at the naive

innocence of my youth?

That barefoot country boy from a world that

no longer exists.

Or should I celebrate that child,

whose wonder at nature and things mechanical was

and is, unbridled.

A child whose love of reading allowed him

not only an escape but a chance to grow,

unhindered by circumstance

and geography.

At what point did the innocence of this child

become a liability?

Something to be used and destroyed.

Forever changing, forever wounding

the man he would become.

Wounded child,

mourned by the man.