Tag: childhood
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Walking Her Bicycle Back Home, Alone
Oh, child of mine, I’ve come back toreclaim your most precious thing from that blue ravine off the stone road.I lack the steadiness and pulse of movementto ride it home.So, I walk it back totally alone now,remembering those first unsteady lessonsuntil you found the perfect balance to peddle this silver dreambeyond my steady support.I will…
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Walking the Living Beach
Past:The sea foam grants me gifts of pink, blue, green:a man-o-war, a mermaid’s purse,brine shrimp,sea lettuce. With each step, I feel my feet uncover and burythe beach’s cycle,the grit and stingof warm sand caressing my soles.I wish to stay to watch the purple evening come,long enough to witness the loggerhead turtlebury its eggs in the…
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Childhood 3: Riding Dark Horses Bareback and Barefoot
The boy wants a horse.The dad gets him a horse—a bronco he was told which use to be a thoroughbred,a black wind of a creaturewho barely tolerates the old, cracked saddlefrom the dad’s jockey days.It takes two track hands to hold the reins, to keep the stallion stillwhen the dad addresses him . In the…
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Childhood 2: Creating Wonder
Only a child believes that a jar of released fireflies will become stars.That the calico teddy bear watchingthe still lake with you knows every creature in the 100 acre woodsThat the too big straw hatwill never blow off your headwhen running through a field of lilacs.That the biggest fish ever caughtis the blue origami one…
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Childhood 1: Visiting the Land of Make Believe
This is not a true story but the expression of a wish of a poor Bronx girlon Christmas Day. There were Christmas gifts but they flew out the windowin a drunken father’s rage.There was a menagerie setwith a Jesus in a manger,cows, sheep, pig, donkeys,two collies, a pony and a camel,but all was shatteredto pieces,…
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Life’s Moments
The child looks out her toy windowand imagines her adult self sailing on the blue ocean of the old hat box that holds her communion veil. Her childhood dances alone along the berm’s dawn light as the sloop plies onto the sand.They hug and gallop horses bareback in the vanishing mistwhile Tess, the sea turtle…
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The String is not the only Thing that Holds the Kite in the Air
If kites are nothing but a cross on a sailthey can only rise.Yet, the child running with all his joyin the brown fieldon a cloudless day will hold the string taut, thinking it’s up to himto keep the kite in the air and never let its line cross the path of birds.Today, he will learn…
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The Mayas of the Old Beehive
The Mayas of Colemnar Viejo for the last twilight hours of early May exist in mature thoughts, statues unable to address the questions designed to unseat their repose from spectators marching into shadows. By night they will know the answers that will secret their lives, grateful for Ermita de Remedios for the revelation and…