Reflections
For K. & Her Little One
Your texting goads me out the door to you gliding neighborly,
lithe fingers bearing Dine-and-Dash, fixing addresser error.
Our meeting’s motion spouts in your gleaming smile’s lively ocean,
spry parcel’s passing cresting dress, whirling windless air to roar.
Mischievous mosey touts sinful glowing: wild like the posy,
past revel blooming, merging your twirling with lass fair, so scored,
Spinning sundress staring high
Swaying under Jerry’s cry
“Wading in a drop of dew”
Time rolls away — it’s true!
Time rolls away — so few!
Tied in the bright summer dye
Skyward, earthward arms to fly
Sun turns upward, dancer flew
Time rolls away — anew!
Time rolls away — so few!
Dress spread under starry sky
Smile greets heaven’s passerby
The girl fixed eternal new
Time burns away — the dew!
Time rolled away — from you!
Working starts anew, ending with your e-moting quietude,
requesting that landscaping stop for just one hour and no more.
Starting music class, chiming kids, wooden fluting, drumming bash,
defying score perfecting, but for one Hour above the roar.
Lyrics ring softly, muting in her golden strumming strongly,
the singing bard directing what becomes one’s Hours ever scored,
Seeing in those days gone by
Carefree singing my goodbye,
“I will never be so new!”
Time rolls away — so few!
Time rolls away — the dew!
Son smiles singing summer high
Swinging arms to soothe his cry,
“I am dancing just for you!”
Time rolls away — so few!
Time rolls away — my dew!
The child’s wonder widens eye
On dress spread, his mother’s sigh,
“Never here again with you!”
Time burns away — my dew!
Time stole the day — my dew!
Early morning dew, coating grass with a musing solitude,
drenching this landscaping and those toys spreading your lawn to door.
The morning bedewed knowing’s patches with visioning renewed,
mixing this day’s living and those joys vexing, forgone before.
The sun’s reflecting, morphing past with mothering perfecting,
urging this day making joys — evaporating evermore.
My neighbor texted me about food mistakenly delivered to her home in error. She is a striking actress with a lively personality, giving her much flair that reminded me of a girl at a Dead Show long ago. Shortly after our exchange, she texted again to request if the landscapers could stop working for an hour so she could hold a music class for her son and friends. Walking past her yard, I heard a woman’s lovely singing. Returning to work, Spotify played the Grateful Dead’s “Franklin’s Tower” from Blues for Allah and “Sugar Magnolia” from American Beauty. Later that day, I reread The Raven by Poe.
All these occurrences melded into the inspiration for this piece.
Both Dead songs inspired the lyrics embedded between the poetry loosely based thematically on The Raven and the Hours or (Horae) that reference the Greek goddesses of seasons who guide time even for the gods. This poem didn’t come out quite the way I desired metrically, perhaps for trying to incorporate too many layers, but further refinement seemed to lose the intended meaning.
Photo by Liana Mikah on Unsplash