Ruminations of a little girl

What is it to be a little girl, --
To believe it will get better but
Only knowing “getting better” when it does
Because who knows what “better” means
Until it happens?
What is it to be a flower
in a garden without water,
a bird without enough feathers for its wings,
A shadow coming into its own,
a tear for every argument that the clouds really will
lighten, and the rain really will stop,
and the sun really will rise again?
What is it to trust your own instincts,
Your own ears, eyes, nose, heart, and mouth
To run toward a green field, to fold into its arms
Before the grass goes brown, and smoke in the
distance means that other field is already burning?
What is it to push the most improbable objects
back and forth until they fit, to shape a beautiful
landscape of colors,
smells and things a mother leaves

around, -- this book, that hairbrush,
that picture of your father on horseback when he
was young -- because she wants you to know
there is music in the air
even though no one sings anymore,
the neighbors are all sick and
you can't hear a sound?
How often can one question
what is to happen next
only to be told that it will come,
that sense of things
that flutters on
the heart
like a moth at night,
the moth
discovered in the morning
dead in the morning
light.

It won’t matter later,
So much they insist upon, but
hold you
Up against a protective shoulder
anyway,

-- you never know: that man brandishing his
crooked stick; that pride of lions hiding in the thick
-- And bear you off to dreams that aren’t what they
Say they’ll be.

To watch the world
weave up
From the forgotten cries
Of a wounded bird,
of a little boy I used to play with and who has gone
away to some place safer because
his parents are rich,
what is it
to be me?
One day I am sure I will find that out too, however
long it takes for someone
with a glass of water
and the eyes of love, to pull me out of bed again,
to wake me up
into the imponderable glory of another old
fashioned perfect morning
and just tell me,
See?

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