Portals

Portals

It moves me when I see
grown ups playing
in the street with children.

It shows me that they still understand
the thrill of kicking soccer balls
into Mrs. Beyler’s yard

or whacking baseballs
behind Mrs. Heward’s house
and then running

for all they’re worth rounding bases,
mostly gunny sacks from barns
or shingles blown off the house.

When the games are finished
or when their wives call them
from the front porch, they trudge

toward home, T-shirts drenched
in sweat, their voices carrying stories
of great slides, nifty catches with one hand.

Slowly they each turn into their own
yards, sensing that youth stays in the streets.
They open the front door

of their mortgaged houses,
don their disguise of maturity,
slip through the portals of adulthood.