Every summer in these neighborhoods

when children play rounds of Marco Polo

across the continents and small seas

of their backyards and swimming pools,

and when every neatly fenced afternoon dozes

and dreams of perilous quests to lost places,

there is always one small brown boy

whose sharp voice is stern beyond his years,

who shouts and skips at the searcher’s very fingertips 

because he knows that he is brave,

and knows that the others know it too,

and knows that bravery means nothing here,

who cuts with his body white silky roads

through the water that piles up continually

between him and his companions like little Himalayas,

who is the first to shout out “Polo!”

and the first to spring back, at once

—like the hidden world he loves—

begging and refusing to be found.