Looking For Sticks

Let’s go looking for sticks!

Let’s go looking.

For sticks!

If anyone asks we’ll pretend that we’re kids

We’ll say, “We’re just nine year olds, 

To whom nothing is barred, and

I think you’ll find, that’s what 

We’re doing in your garden.”

We kids can go anywhere

That’s one of the rules

And… he’s calling the cops….

He’s not so easily fooled

There’s no joy for us here

He’s seen through our disguise

He knows that we’re really two middle aged guys

Our quest for some sticks must continue elsewhere

And it’s odd, when you’re older

How people will stare

As you crawl on the ground, examining twigs

Discarding them, mostly, for not being so big

I want one that’s special, and bendy, and strange

I just want to hold it, I just want to play

With a branch that could work as a gun or a sword

A stick that I can, for no reason, adore

Let’s run through the fields and the snickets and yards

Let’s get dirt on our faces

And stay out ‘til it’s dark

Let’s go looking for sticks

And lose track of the day

And then, when it’s hometime

Let’s throw them away

There’ll be more sticks tomorrow

It’s the searching that’s good

Let’s keep looking, forever

For those beautiful fragments of wood