NaBloPoMo #3
Yep, I'm a day behind my poetry posts. And, I'm sleepy--not a good combination.
Today's poem comes from Starbucks. I liberally picked phrases from this blurb that was on the back of my grande hot chocolate. Here's the quote and then the poem.
****
Childhood Elegy
Childhood’s a strange country,
one in which I now need a passport;
it is my lost and found, my place in between
when the rainbow isn’t enough.
Back when my nickname was Trouble,
I was all cake breath and grass stains.
What did I want to be when I grew up?
A superhero, of course. In June’s humid evenings
I’d tear the blossoms out of honeysuckles
to suck the sweet nectar from its center.
That’s what it was like, one big
hide and seek—and I was always “it.”
I’d draw pictures for hours
ntil blisters formed under my skin
while the colors blended black
into a ruined sky.
Oh, my little other, my dark one:
hold onto your teddy bear
and never let go.
Today's poem comes from Starbucks. I liberally picked phrases from this blurb that was on the back of my grande hot chocolate. Here's the quote and then the poem.
The Way I See It #282
Childhood is a strange country. It’s a place you come from or go to – at least in your mind. For me it has an endless, spellbound something in it that feels remote. It’s like a little sealed-vault country of cake breath and grass stains where what you do instead of work is spin until you’re dizzy.
-- Lyall Bush, Executive director of Richard Hugo House, center for writers and readers.(Also, there's a Ntozake Shange reference in the poem.)
****
Childhood Elegy
Childhood’s a strange country,
one in which I now need a passport;
it is my lost and found, my place in between
when the rainbow isn’t enough.
Back when my nickname was Trouble,
I was all cake breath and grass stains.
What did I want to be when I grew up?
A superhero, of course. In June’s humid evenings
I’d tear the blossoms out of honeysuckles
to suck the sweet nectar from its center.
That’s what it was like, one big
hide and seek—and I was always “it.”
I’d draw pictures for hours
ntil blisters formed under my skin
while the colors blended black
into a ruined sky.
Oh, my little other, my dark one:
hold onto your teddy bear
and never let go.
Comments
Thanks for the kind words.