By Sean Dempsey

When I was a child

There stood a house by a lake

In a bed of woods it did lay

We would yearly devote

To find hearth reached only by boat

On a trip that took forever and a day.

When I was a child

My two brothers and I

And little sister, merely three years,

We would play high in a tree

In house built for them and for me

By our father with a dark bristly beard.

When I was a child

High in that tree far away

I was Rufio with his host of lost boys

My sister was Tink

All dolled up in pink

And Hook schemed to loot and destroy.

When I was a child

Neverland was my home

My childhood played out in that tree

Loosely nailed boards

Held boys playing with swords

Where life was brazen and free.

When I was a child

Far away in the woods

I climbed the tree ladder so high

There was a mermaid to kiss

And no parents to miss

While happy memories taught Peter to fly.

The years ticked on by

And to the woods I’d return

But, peeping up, before the base of the tree

Neverland, it seemed,

More and more like a dream–

And the boy no longer in me.

When no longer a child

I returned to the lake

My father’s bristly beard now fully white

I looked up at the Pine

Holding memories all mine

And beheld my treehouse’s plight:

Rotted were boards

That held the supports

And the tree itself all but had died

Hook, it did seem–

That scoundrel and fiend–

Was attempting to leave us deprived

On my 30th year

I returned to the lake

To find my treehouse did no longer stand

Smashed to the ground

Only pieces were found

Of the once beloved Neverland.

My childhood fell

But I shed not a tear

I’d find treehouses in my future to build;

And then Neverland would,

For Neverland should,

In every child’s mind be filled

—-

I heard on the news

That a funnyman died–

But I once knew him as Peter Pan.

Seems his treehouse collapsed

And laughter was sapped

The day the child turned man.