Half a lifetime of days...

Dear little Holly

with the Dorothy Hamill haircut that snatched away your golden locks
and left you with a mop of brown
that for years
caused people to think that you were a boy

I see you

whose almond eyes will 
one day
find their way to the face of a son
who shares the day of your birth
and 
who will quarry your heart
to the end


I see you


after the moment
suspended above
you will rush off to play in the summer heat
slapping at mosquitoes
and screaming of ghosts run amuck
while you grab the hand of the girl down the street
the one that you will boss and hen peck
again and again
until you both tire of the charade
and she moves away

I see you

there is no way that you can know
the myriad paths you will stumble down
ones where you will be following the trail
of others
half smiling, half stunned
hoping you can just stop
for a moment
to grab the stitch in your side
and so you can figure out
where the hell you are going
before they leave without you

or

the ones where the grass is waist high
and you are convinced that you are
the very first person to lay flat the blades
and you keep praying
that you won't aggravate the snakes
or make anybody mad
because you walked off
without telling them
where
you
were
going

I see you

do you remember that one class picnic
at the park on Nottingham
where there was a merry-go-round that 
even then
seemed ironic
and you jumped into the center
holding onto the bars with both hands
and as you turned and turned
the world spinning round you
you noticed that
if you tilted your head one way
you could still make out all that was whirling round you
each tree
each person
each lunchbox on the picnic table
but if you tilted your head the other way
suddenly
the world became a blurry watercolor painting
with everything leaving colored vapor trails
and you could still recognize things
but they kept slipping out of
your mind's eye and oozing into
the next image

That is what separates the little you
above
from the big me
below

half a lifetime of days
my dear

but I still see you