CHILD'S PLAY: Some thoughts about identity change

	As a child I played with soldiers
	then later dallied in romance.

	As an adult I played with power
	and later with finance.

	Then one day
	I became part of a small funeral game
	in which people dressed themselves
	in black & gray

	& near the place where my ashes lay
	in fields of auburn grass
	birds sang in a gentle breeze
	as little ones
	who knew nothing at all about "me"
	joyfully played & danced.


   The evening had settled into a quiet that comes after long conversation, when the easy 
topics have been exhausted and something more restless begins to stir. Ron leaned back, 
his eyes moving beyond the room, and when he spoke, his voice carried the weight of 
thoughts that had been circling for a while.

   "Is human life merely like a child's play," he asked, "and our existence any different 
from a mayfly's brief day?"

   Linda let out a soft chuckle, the kind that acknowledges a truth without quite wanting 
to sit with it. "Well," she said, tilting her head, "it certainly seems that way."

   Lis shifted forward, a half-smile playing at the corner of her mouth. It was the look of 
someone testing the weight of a question before fully committing to it. "But isn't there 
any grand epiphany?" she pressed, her tone balanced between genuine curiosity and gentle mockery. 
"Is human life like but a brief buffet, whose food is destined to swiftly decay?"

   Linda's brow furrowed, caught off guard by the sudden turn toward something almost
philosophical. "Are you looking to me for answers?" she asked, a note of bewilderment creeping
into her voice, as though she'd been handed a question far too large for her.

   Lis simply shrugged, unbothered, her smile widening slightly. "Well, I'm asking for an opinion."

   The words hung there between them, half-joking and half-earnest, the kind of question 
that arrives dressed as banter but leaves something quietly unsettled in its wake.



=====================================================================================
from _Last Poems: Lost Poems_ by T Newfields
SUMMARY: Some thoughts about how identity changes at various life stages.
KEYWORDS: identity transformations, human life phases, life cycles, changing desires, human aging,
          transpersonal poetry

Author: T Newfields [Nitta Hirou / Huáng Yuèwǔ] (b. 1955 - )
Begun: 1993 in Shizuoka, Japan ✠ Finished: 2026 in Shizuoka, Japan
Creative Commons License: Attribution. {{CC-BY-4.0}} 

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TRANSLATIONS

DEUTSCH   https://www.tnewfields.info/de/kinder.htm
ESPAÑOL   https://www.tnewfields.info/es/cosa.htm
FRANÇAIS  https://www.tnewfields.info/fr/jeu.htm
NIHONGO   https://www.tnewfields.info/jp/asobi.htm
URDU      https://www.tnewfields.info/Translations/Azqan6.htm
ZHŌNGWÉN  https://www.tnewfields.info/zh/haizi.htm