Echoes of my Childhood

Now when I go up, the wind pulls me

to go up higher. I go up

to breathe the air that fills my lungs,

and the wind whispers its secrets into my ears,

secrets I still hear.

If I go even higher, it is the way

a bird soars higher with its wings.

If I remember my childhood,

it is as if I am still running

in a plain I was in.

I run, and the wind runs with me.

What is it to have a memory, like a kite

flying in the heat of summer?

Try climbing the mountain

to reach the dusty plain on

the other side.

It is filled with excitement.

Sometimes I go to the plain,

and the plain is lonely. There the wind

greets me;

a man is walking with a bag of grass,

a man who nods his head in the sun;

there is the silhouette of a silent mountain

in the distance—or is it the horizon, like a thin line?

I don’t know about the memories; all

I know that sometimes

someone will pick up an old kite

of his childhood

and start flying it—that sits there

in his closet—like a sad bird asleep in its cage,

and that has left it there

because time caught up with us;

leaving us with memories of long ago.