The children here are as old as the crumbling buildings

It’s as though they have absorbed the history that surrounds them

Or perhaps history has absorbed them?

How can one possibly be young

When you are born into a thousand generations still alive

And thriving?

 

Would it be absurd to imagine

That they crawl out from the walls?

Layer upon layer of familial fingerprints

Footsteps retraced a thousand million times

Indeed I believe that they stand

In the impressions left by forefathers

Long since departed but

Stubbornly refusing to leave

 

History is alive here

Tangible like the cave drawings

Etched into the rocks not so far away

Time seems to have paused

Existence is no longer linear

The water coloured lines have bled

Into one another

 

The past is the present

The tables are long

And the chairs are many

And all are welcome to feast

 

If I permit my mind to wander even further

I imagine that the birdsong of spring

Is evidence of ancestors unwinding from the sleepy earth

Their task being to ensure that everything

Is as it should be

The children are safe under the watchful eyes of the trees

Babies are hushed to sleep

Courtesy of waterfall lullabies 

 

They awake with rose apple cheeks that can only come

When you are bred from cheese and wine

Where the endless mountains

And meandering valleys are your playground

Where you learn to swim in cooling waters

Of ice melt 

And school days take place

In the green carpeted hills

Sprayed with the colours of wild flowers

Which dawdle under candy floss clouds

In the apricot sky

 

The children here

Come from a place long since forgotten by time

They walk in the footsteps of Cézanne

And Van Gogh

 

This is a place that inspires poetic verse

Where life is imbued with wonder and awe

The kind of beauty that takes the artist to the edge of madness

Forcing one to dig to the very depth of your being only to find it is never enough

 

No brush, quill, nor ink

Can capture the wonder of such an exquisite tapestry

It is ethereal by nature

Not of this world

 

The only way to capture it

Is to feel it

To breath it in deeply

Tattoo it into your soul

Here you may die

But you will never, really

Truly become old. 

C.K.23.