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.