Pigtails tucked beneath our collars
so briars and brambles would not snatch and drag,
we raced like little hellions (mothers’ ungracious grief’s)
down reach-branch ruts
to our favorite well-laid mat of grass
in a un-mown meadow.
Reaching out of our castle-grounds, we,
of Prairie pulse where safety was not an issue,
caught, carefully, spider-webbed dandelions
and made straw-scratch wishes by quick pout-lipped puffs
that sent skyward, our hopes to weave and wrestle
with a skyful of summer serendipity
and blue busy with secrets of many little girls.
Peeling bitter-bark back, we sucked pencil-thin stems
until they curled at our wet kisses
enough to become linked together
to make a ring: Embellished with earthy fragrance
of mint from the streambed that wove
bumble and stumble through gully nearby;
a wet seam between our father’s fine ranches,
our unbound hair flew with our ecstatic eager energy
to be anything but girls,
patterned after their mother’s prim lip-gripped, lavender, lethargy.
Tucking tall Timothy into the bands of our shorts,
we became Hawaiian Princesses, complete with stickle skirts;
daughter’s of Chiefs, with thatch-patch of mat-woven chamois’s.
We were Church ladies, twisted-straw batons conducting
our little Sunday choirs of birds and little beasties.
Sometimes we were even warriors, and Joans of Arcs,
and characters from The Thunder Rolls; sometimes many
woven all-together into the little spoke-wheeled stage.
When we stopped believing in what ‘being safe’ meant;
when a few stickers stuck and we carried them home
on our socks, down the back of our shirts, in our cotton panties,
we were caught and taught to crochet, to knit, to tat
and the click of our mother’s tongues
set tempo to all that unraveled a sweet summer’s crowning glory.
We became frayed ends of their tight-pounced tapestries.
Author notes
Tis true, tis true
In a list
A contest entry
- Tapestry ( PIF) by Freed by Mercy.
900 points, ended August 16, 2008, 13 entries
Gold trophy winner
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Please tell me what you think
Comments
1 - 6 of 6
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Magnificent! Full of energy, detail and imagery.
This flows so beautifully. This is how I want to write.
The final stanza is so appropriate, and very sad.
I remember those "stickers". No big deal.
Nowadays, we'd worry about ticks and Lyme's disease, amber alerts, pedophiles...
Ah the freedom of childhood. No more...
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Exactly...and ty again.
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tis true too..you tell a great story...in wonderful ways...and Ill bet it was those stickers that keep your memories alive
LOL
love it
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So true, dear friend......I remember the straw chaffing from sliding down the haystacks well....
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lmao
This is so adorable...and touching as well....It reminded me of when my cousins and I would stand on my grandma's plant stand with branches for microphones and I was Karen Carpenter....They were Elvis and Sonny and Cher.....and we thought the see-saw may reach the moon one day....It seems we had nothing but imagination to play with in those days
ty for making me smile
Lynda
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Such wonderful memories..... such fun and so perfectly human we were when we were children....
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