Days 11 & 12

Day 12

For Childhood, an elegy

"The imagination spans beyond despair

Outpacing bargain, vocable and prayer."

from For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen, Hart Crane

Our castle, built of white sheets strung

on mother's laundry line smelled

of sunshine and dandelion,

a limp stemmed flower tucked behind my ear.

Do you remember the span of grass

between the swing-set and the sandbox

we called the Groundless sea?

Your ship the latest cardboard box we fished

from my father's trash.  Your cargo, provisions

of pebbles and sticks.  

I loved the choppy blonde ocean

of your hair and never tired of trying to decode

the secrets stamped in the map of your eyes

those two, ragged petaled irises.  

These stories still draw themselves 

in stringy clouds set

inside fiery sunsets, in the open and close of spiral shells 

in the sparrow's mottled wing

what is real we didn't imagine -- 

but if I look too close,

I see wrinkles in my hands and wonder how we manage 

to live with ruined Troy 

burnt and smoking 

inside our human hearts.

Day 11