March Night

I shook off the house like a hooded cape,
And came out, free, into the March-blown street…
At a lash of the gale, at a sight of the cloud-tattered skies,
As a coat discarded,
I shook off civilization
And became wild,
And my naked soul raced the clouds,
And the flavor of the Earth was fresh and primitive…

—James Oppenheim (1882–1932), “March Night,” War and Laughter, 1916

Cozy inner child

Comfort is — buying an XL
flannel jacket for the winter
even though you’re only a medium
because it reminds you of your daddy —

and on that first chilly day
cold seeps in though the gaps —
but really you don’t much mind
because in your little girl memories
he’s keeping you safe and snuggly warm.

Terri Guillemets

Iridescent

the years sprint, sail, drift, fly —
days melt into sleep
decades we no longer know
by taste or smell, yes
but hard fast memories tend not to keep —
youth lives on — yet, is long gone
birds chirp each spring anew
but our hearts sing the same shades
of childhood colors we once knew

Terri Guillemets

When you were a child

When you were a child, on a summer afternoon,
Did you lie in tall grass, listening to the crickets
Foreshadowing autumn, listening to the small
Infinite sounds of earth? Did you press your cheek
And your short brown body furiously down
Into the grass, so loving the narrow roots,
So loving the hard wild flanks of hills, and summer,
That when your slight strength broke at last, you cried…
Then rising in the slow wind, cried no more
But stood and gazed with grave young eyes upon
The brief, unburdened hours lived and gone,
Yourself, the child, abandoned in the grass,
Yourself, the man, earth’s lover, who would follow
The strong years deathward, aching and possessed?

—Frances Frost, “Year of Earth,” These Acres, 1932