Fat Man's Dream

It was not like this when I was young.

Physical clarity,
an invulnerability I thought would last forever
coupled with a tendency to be lazy, intellectually obscure,
like a kind of deep mindless sleep,
was then the order of it all for all of us.

Ideas were hatched as primal aching imperatives
absent reason, reasoning and concern for accountability.
The world was a size too small,
uncomfortable and out of touch with the burning priority of our teens.

Our passage into an early maturity was new, astonishing,
overwhelming and confusing
but we felt compelled to treat it all as ancient boring news.
This denial helped hide the rules from us;
it blurred the acceptable parameters of our existence.

There were many times during those virgin summers, when we were all, out there on the edge.