Happy Birthday to Chiyaruzu

Happy Birthday to my life loving son Charles! Whose only birthday request was for me to write him a poem 


what better way to be
in your body than to feel
oozy mud murking
'tween fingers and toes,

than to wildly descend
careening hills without
considering the journey's end;

what better way to see
than to delight in dappled rainbows
stirring otherwise dormant halls.

I watch this boy, not boy,
solid citizen of the concrete
and corporeal
appreciate every morsel,
sliding open each new day
with a whoop of "ni wa!"*

what better way to dream
than to drift face up
in the Mediterranean Sea,
gentle wave nudging,
lost in the finding;

what better way to remember
than to relish only the
long worthwhile "whee!"

*2 year old American boy version of konnichiwa