Inexpensive innocence

there's a little patch of slum dwelling near my apartments and the other day while I was walking back from some work in that area, i just happened to observe some of the kids over their, playing. It was that vision that makes this poem.

There, right by the side of the busy street,

Lies a tiny patch of Peter Pan's Neverland.

Where throes of laughter echo unburdened,

From the happiest shining faces I've ever seen.

They're tiptoeing on broken bus benches,

They're jumping on each other and bumbling.

There is constant chatter in shrill voices,

With complete ignorance of the shabby environs.

There is one more, pouring sand into a bottle,

Only to throw it out and start all over again.

How does he find joy in exercises of futility?

While we despair in a life full of excesses.

More kids running up and down a dirt mound,

Probably the only peak some of them will scale.

'Ooooo!' one shouts as he comes tumbling down,

Taking a fall with a bigger smile than we could give.

What do they know of money and the lack of it?

It's their own small world insulated from sorrow.

I look at us people and feel we're missing a beat,

When I see these examples of inexpensive innocence.