Upside-down World

I must have been six or seven

When in the long slow afternoons

Of joyously lazy summer holidays

My seven or eight year old brother 

Having exhausted his repertoire

Of games, tricks and every prank

His cheeky leadership led me through 

I would flop on the relative coolth

Of our bedroom’s mosaic floor and

Stare up at the sluggish swirl of

Ceiling fan blades moving thick air

And wonder what it would be like

If I could climb up to live for a while

In the upside-down world furnished only

By upright floor fans and vertical lights

A minimalist world where I could roam 

Watching the antics of all the others

Caught up in their daily mundane busyness

While I floated dreamily between air and light;

Decades later as the world seems to unravel 

I find myself longing for those innocent times 

A return to daydreams in which I could tell

What was upside down and what was right side up.