THE TOYS OF MY CHILDHOOD

The Toys of my Childhood
Where have they gone?
The mounted Knight cast in metal
The fighter plane and racing car
And wooden stick a rifle was
My salvation in many a fight
As Soldier, Frontiersman and Cowboy

The Toys of my Childhood
Have they gone?
I race no more on oil slick track
My car has made its last pit stop
Nor does my Fighter Plane do derring-do
Against the Blacked Hat Adversary

The Toys of my Childhood
Why have they gone?
My rifle shooteth not at Foreign troop
Nor Savage horde. Nor Outlaws in
The deepening dusk of some Western Town

The Toys of my Childhood
Have they really gone?
In Childhood illness they passed the time
And kept me company in lonely days of Solitude
When Friends were not nigh
And many’s the night my soft cloth
Monkey puppet caressed my cheek
And cuddled with me in my child’s bed

The Toys of my Childhood
Of course they’ve gone
I lead not my Knights into heroic battle
Across the greensward of contested field
The stench of death filleth not my nostrils
And the wild braying of dying horse
Falls no more on ears attuned to sounds of Adult need

The Toys of my Childhood
Have gone and rightly so
For I wish not
In the reality of my Manhood
To fight Wars or Air battles or shootouts
Those days of yesteryear were
The cocoon of my Childhood and now
The free butterfly of my Adult mind

The Toys of my Childhood
Can never be gone
For I carry somewhere within me
All those precious Memories of Adventure
Provided for me in my Childhood
And even more, instilled in me for all time
The Imagination and Fantasy
That makes me Human