Peter Pan’s Soliloquy
In Never Land, each sunrise brings anew
A day of play and laughter to pursue.
I meet the mermaids, swim in their lagoon,
And dance with Indians beneath the moon.
I once fed Captain Hook to Crocodile!
Still every time I think of it, I smile.
Yet sometimes, when I lie awake in bed,
The Milky Way in glory overhead,
A little voice within says, “Peter Pan,
Would life be more fulfilling as a man?
To grow in Wendy’s world, to take a wife,
With whom to join to make and raise new life?”
The fairies died; some new ones came along,
Continuing to troll their endless song.
I’ve played in Never Land two hundred years,
From simple hide-and-seek to dodging spears,
And yet, I’ve never aged a single day.
Am I a creature solely made for play?
My friends abandoned me. I live alone.
They all moved in with Wendy, soon were grown,
And one ran off, with Wendy as his bride.
They soon had children, then grew old and died.
Time massacred them all, but me, he spared
So I could see him murder all who cared.
I played with Wendy’s daughter, but she grew
And then forsook me for a man she knew.
Thus, even I, who never have to grow,
Must stay behind and watch my friends all go.
How dear the price to live this life of ease,
To fly, to play, just doing as I please!
I stare back up, as changeless as the stars.
Leave Never Land for realms of men and cars?
To slave away each day, no time for play?
I can’t. I have no choice. I have to stay.
Yet still, I ask: would it be best for me
To go, to be a better kind of free?
First Dealings with Death
The schoolchildren skipped and scampered at play.
One girl stood gravely, gazing down,
Holding out hands, where a hidden thing lay.
I went to see why she wore such a frown.
A fallen pre-fledgeling! She’d found a bird,
Hatched on high, now wholly perished.
She stood like a statue and stared, not a word,
At the bare little bird she blindly cherished.
I stood beside the schoolgirl of five
And mused and mentioned: no more could we do.
She kissed it to cause it to come alive
And wake (for this worked in Snow White, she knew)—
No definite dealings with death before.
She finally stopped fighting its fate: it had died.
When the recess bell rang, she roosted no more;
She buried the bird, said goodbye, walked inside.
“Peter Pan’s Soliloquy” and “First Dealings With Death” were first published by The Society of Classical Poets.
Joshua C. Frank works in the field of statistics and lives in the American Heartland. His poetry has been published in The Society of Classical Poets, Snakeskin, The Lyric, Sparks of Calliope, Westward Quarterly, New English Review, Atop the Cliffs, Our Day’s Encounter, The Creativity Webzine, Asses of Parnassus, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, All Your Poems, Verse Virtual, The Asahi Haikuist Network, LEAF Journal, and the anthologyWhose Spirits Touch, and his short fiction has been published in New English Review, The Creativity Webzine, and Nanoism.
Sparks of Calliope 