Hide and Seek King
When I was young, I liked to play
With other kids on my block.
To backyards, front yards, everywhere,
For fun, we would all flock.
Every sport and game we played,
When one kid on a losing streak
Resolved with single-mindedness
To be the best at hide and seek.
Oh, he was good, so very good,
And the kids looked all around.
Time went by, and he twiddled his thumbs,
But he couldn’t by them be found.
So very happy was the boy,
And the reason was because,
He was showing that at hide and seek,
He was the best that ever was.
The kids all home to dinner went,
But our hero did not move.
To be the very, very best
He still had yet to prove.
The moon went up, the sun went down.
Sleepiness and hunger, they both reared a head,
But to be the king of his chosen game,
He couldn’t go home and go to bed.
And so, he sat quietly in place,
And watched the sun rise and set.
The days and nights went passing by,
And on rainy ones, he got wet.
Other boys as they grew up.
Their lives they would unfurl.
Some would play on the football team
Or date a beautiful girl.
But our story’s stealthy champion thought,
“I’d just as well avoid that sort of thing.
That heartbreak and embarrassment
Would keep me from being the hide-and-seek king.”
As the years and decades came and passed,
His hide-and-seek prowess only grew.
While his old friends had wives and kids,
And one day, grandkids too.
But he was a man who had a plan,
So even as he grew old and gray,
He would not give up his quest and budge -
Not now, or on any other day.
Gradually his old friends all passed,
And he was all alone.
He was 100 long years old
When he ascended to the hide-and-seek throne.
By and by, he then turned to dust,
Which by the wind was gently blown.
The world had long forgotten him,
And his achievement was never known.
He played the game so perfectly
That no one will ever see -
Not a single person on the earth will find
That the hide-and-seek king was really me.
Copyright ©
David Crandall
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