Who can tell what is in the head of a young person?
Who can tell what lies behind soft smooth expressions?
When we are young we are general issue,
wearing the uniform of possibility.
When I was young there were islands of awareness
maybe even an archipelago in the ocean of bafflement
Time goes on and life writes on our faces, turns
them into masks that hint at what may be inside
Everyone is an enigma, but there are questions
of different kinds, framed by hope and despair.
It is not only that we decorate ourselves with illusions
that are dear to us as life itself, our very own lives.
We decorate whomever we see, whomever we think
we want to know; we pin medals on their chests
What is in the head of a young person comes out
as life goes along and recedes even deeper as well
I look at the young and remember, but remember
all wrong, mixing my own elements up
I don’t know what’s in my head, I still sail an ocean
of bafflement, why should I question the young?
I confess when I look at a lily, at a rose, when I
take their scents in, questions form in my mind.