Are you taller, now, after all these years
Standing with Adam in the promised land
Man with large dreams, reaching to touch
That stuff—the sky—serene in the ether

Childlike, with zest and gusto, you reached
Seizing upon the dreams, built upon
The shoulders of giants, stretching upward
Those who came before, like Michelangelo
Sculptors, carving with your hands
Stories of today, wrapped in the cloth of tomorrow

Here we stand, at the carnival of dreams
Finding eternity
Feeding the muse, daily
In your theater of ideas
Illustrated men, woven into words
Sending our own rockets from between our ears
On their way to Alpha Centauri

If Gertie saw you today
Enjoying your dandelion wine
She would be proud
Knowing we all need someone higher, wiser, older
To tell us we’re not crazy after all
That what we’re doing is all right
And that someone is you

By photo by Alan Light, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1566877

An homage to Bradbury and his poem, “If Only We Had Taller Been“. It doesn’t follow a rigid, strict academic rhyme scheme. Instead, it relies on loose, conversational couplets mixed with unrhymed internal cadences, much like a folk ballad or open narrative speech.