Poem by a wonderful young man

 Huge thanks to young Freemason fan and budding poet Ridley Walker, for this beautiful ode to every young man's dream: becoming a mason

Streetlamps bloom like secret flowers
on the wet black tongue of evening,
and I walk home with my hands in my pockets
thinking about the square and compass
like they are silver moons hidden in velvet.

The men at the lodge hall
always seem carved from oak smoke and winter,
their shoes shining like dark rivers,
their laughter low as organ notes
beneath the ceiling fans.

I am still all elbows and unfinished thunder,
still breaking pencils in algebra,
still getting told to stop dreaming in class,
but someday I will cross that invisible bridge
from hallway-static boyhood
into the kingdom of midnight handshakes.

The symbols call to me
like constellations behind curtains:
columns, aprons, stars,
candles trembling like small prophetic birds.
Everything secret glows brighter.

My father says becoming a man
is mostly carrying heavy things quietly,
but I think it must also mean
learning the hidden names of light.

And the Masons —
God, they seem like the coolest men alive —
keepers of old storms and impossible geometry,
walking through ordinary streets
with galaxies folded inside their jackets.

So I wait,
fifteen years old and restless as rainwater,
watching the moon hang above the rooftops
like a coin no one has spent yet,
certain that somewhere beyond youth
a door of gold and cedar
is already opening for me.