Happy Birthday Jaybug

My son turned ten yesterday and I thought I'd include this wonderful poem by Billy Collins. I, of course, did not give it to Jay to read...it's the kind of poem that might be about turning ten but wouldn't be truly understandable until he's thirty.

When Jay was two he had an imaginary friend named Orban. Then came Hair, Glasses, Head Frensky and Fudd. All five of Jay's imaginary friends. Orban was the main guy, but he was killed in China a few years back (where in the heck did that come from?) and the other's have just faded away. I miss those guys! Here's a poem, for Jay....


On Turning Ten


The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

Billy Collins