The amaryllis catches light
in petal prisms, fancy’s sleight;
look to science if you must
but I will call it pixie dust.
I do realize, dear reader, that not all of you are old enough to remember Walt Disney’s version of “Peter Pan,” featuring Tinkerbell and her pixie dust. But you can imagine. It’s hard not to be drawn to Neverland; that second star to the right was beautiful. And who, after all, wants to grow up?
If you were light
and could play on a rose,
would you slide,
do you suppose,
down velvet hill,
where shadow splash
marks your soft plop
with grinned panache?
Then would you climb back up,
find that shy frill,
and pirouette there
in lucent trill?
Would you leap tip-to-tip
with weightless toes,
like drunken sprite
in perfumed throes?
Under, behind
each vale and peak,
would you dodge and dive
in hide-and-seek?
Would you stop perhaps
and oly-oly-ocean-free
to bask in the stillness
of unfurling reverie?
There is mystery here, dear reader. Apparently some call “olly-olly-oxen-free.” I was intrigued to see that some people who were kids in the Chicago area called “oly-oly-ocean-free” because that’s where I was a kid and that was our cry. So, oxen or ocean, nobody knows, though I did like the suggestion that olly/oly came from all-ye as a call at the end of the farm day to put everything, including the oxen, away for the night.
I remember it as inviolable. Once called, nobody could be tagged. Non-negotiable.
Many thanks to Susan Rushton for the beautiful photo!
Sunless spring,
summer clogged with mud,
daily outlook darkened
with endless storm and flood,
so rare the light of sunset,
the pond cannot believe its eye,
and stops in breathless wonder
to return it to the sky.
Child-tree
frail, lithe
bids the good-bye light
stay.
The grasses lend their wool
musty-hued
but night
and winter
will be.
Many thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.
What light pierces
it fires,
warning the eye:
Look fast —
but a moment’s sun
blazes
through this glowing cup,
this petal’d Chartres.
Under autumn-tinged arch
soulsong clear:
see
me
and remember I was here.
Thanks again to the S.W. Berg Photo Archives.
When I twist
and change direction
do I sculpt waves
of silvered complexion?
Does my world part
making way
through arcs of light
in halo’d play?
Are there ripples
a microsplash
a silken wake
a blazoned flash?
Flushed in autumn nip
in pinked anticipation
my maple’s bright fillip
extols today’s good station:
springtime’s theft has been restored
though light be meager ration
and I will quiet hours hoard
in flannel’d hibernation.
Oddments 