.

You pulled petals from a daisy

trying to keep track
but soon lost your place

and as you frowned,

I handed you a bouquet of daisies
and promised,

“He loves you”

.

As I count crows
sitting on the clothesline
I see a shape in the distance
that I do not recognize
I move a little closer
but the ash trees bring a sad shade
and the lawn flashes its blades,
cutting directly to the heart
in syncopated beatings
like chopping wood in August
when the last saw
is locked away in the shed

I wipe the sweat from my brow
with a scarf scented of past evenings
chasing fireflies and drinking iced tea,
foggy memories in place of
bi-focals smeared and blurred,
unable to focus on the sticker burrs
pulled from my socks,
hanging on for dear life,
let alone the figure approaching
just past the produce stand with
apples and aspargus in season

Still I look,
peering beyond a fractured arbor
of beer bottle skeletons
situated at the far corner
of nowhere’s homestead, off-white pickets
and a rusted gate now
overgrown and over sown
in rows of corn field miseries,
shucked and burned in a steel barrel
down by the mud creek minstrels
playing broken strings
and bent tubas

When I realize it is you
coming home to me,
walking through the sunflowers,
an effervescent blue sky background glows,
roses bloom in pinks and yellows,
robins tend to their young
beneath a rainbow of blessings
in assorted hues and feathers
as what was once what I dreamed
now slowly becomes what I see,
returning to its former beauty
and the sun shines again

I made those paper boats to sail
Folded by hands eagerly  
Then floated them in streams of rain
Now, they come to float in memories

A splash of toes in puddles of mud
As heaven's water washed the eyes
A song on lips of clouds and rain
As I raised my arms to hug the skies

So free and wild those days of yore
Such innocence in  breath of dawn
Laughter lingered through the  night
Oh, how quickly have those days all gone

And stories that grandmother told
Weaves and yarns that life unmasked
Now come back to me in dreams that drift
Like paper boats of the past