Pogo

I was twelve.
On a cool spring moonlit night,
imbued with silver and shadow,
a light wind rustled leaves, and an owl coo oo ooed.
Amid
a grove of white birch,
an old stone wall,
and a solitary hammock,
there lingered four boys and Pogo,
Pogo Clark.

The Clarks...
father, a rare carefree architect, mother, a voluptuous laughing houswife,
Hans, the younger brother, monosyllabic but deeply kind,
and Pogo,
willowy - bewitching - mature
keenly aware of her sensual powers.
The family, at home, were nudists.
Though they were ridiculed by my parents,
I often would persuade Hans to invite me to his house.
No, not merely to gape at the unclothed,
but also to bask in an oasis of simple-hearted spontaneity.
Despite knowing full well of their neighbors scorn,
the Clarks remained blithely unperturbed.
Their effortless, natural demeanor,
instantly disengaged my learned, frigidity propriety,
and though outwardly awkward in their presence,
inwardly, I grew happy, exhilarated - strangely relaxed.
But back to the night...

Pogo was fourteen, but light years ahead in the way of all flesh.
One by one we slipped onto the hammock,
where, while murmuring with demure, sensuous authority,
Pogo bestowed light kisses on our
eyes, cheeks and once or twice - lips.
An arm slipped behind the neck,
a leg carelessly over a thigh,
fingers dancing on skin,
all the while,
brazen, cocksure,
Pogo
quietly, incessantly, hypnotically,
confided in us about her body, her lovers, her pleasures.
Enraptured by the ease with which she embraced life,
her acceptance of pleasure as natural as breath or sunshine,
we became Pogo acolytes, her devoted woodland imps.

Leaning against a tree,
I feigned nonchalance by picking at the paper-thin birch bark,
but with furtive, intoxicated glances,
hung on her every sultry word, move and command.

Every child knows the emperor has no clothes,
few, however, can articulate this common sense.
Here, the fawn high priestess,
not only spoke of it
she lived it.
What is more,
Pogo also had the prodigal wherewithal to
initiate all of us into the experience of Life
unencumbered by the emasculated artifice
of parents’, families’, teachers’, schools’, neighbors’,
blind, deaf and dumb institutions.
At long last, something real was taking place.

It was my turn.
With a hesitant, ungainly eagerness I crawled onto the hammock.
It was then,
while suspended, enveloped, and ravished by
Pogo's breathing, breasts, her leg, lips, fingers, voice
- and amid an excruciatingly exquisite feather-light kiss on my neck -
that I fell from the sky.

In the distance,
my father's constricted voice called out my name.
I desperately pretended not to hear,
but the paternal cry,
a dagger plunged into my bliss,
struck again,
only this time closer.

It was a dream, I was falling.

Pogo sat up, smiled and wordlessly said goodbye.
The others looked at me with indifferent pity.

Not willing to betray the whereabouts of Truth,
I swiftly emerged from the woods.
I walked past my father -
who asked where I had been and what I had been doing.

'Nowhere and nothing.' I answered.
We returned home in an eternal, filial silence.