Boys

BOYS

by Rachel Stogner

A poem, in honor of my two amazing sons.

Let boys be boys.

Let them come in from playing all day

Wind in their hair and sun on their face

And sweating leave their muddy shoes

On your clean kitchen floor.

Let them bring you a bowl full of snakes

Admire it, their most recent find

(Then send them back outside!)

Let them tell you about a bug

Let them shoot imaginary guns

Let boys be boys.

Give them space to wrestle

A mad heap of twitching grunts and giggles

Until someone cries.

Give them room to fly

What’s down that path or beyond that hill

Or even, up in that tree

Let them learn, let them look, let them see

Let boys be boys.

Let them stay up late, and eat a whole bag of chips

And smile when they say that they feel sick

(I told you so)

Watch movies and make tents and whisper to friends

Let them pretend.

Uniforms and hammers and lassos and capes

Let them save the day

Because one day soon

You’ll look up, not down

And see a man in the room.

Wind in his hair and sun on his face

Time moves so fast, it doesn’t wait!

Let boys be boys.