This one here's me aged three
at a trestle table for little ones,
snapped with a box Brownie
at the Miss Rosebud parade.

Fresh as a daisy in crepe paper petals
under an eternal sun.
There's my brother dressed as a magpie...
just out of shot.

I remember that dress.
Yards of love sewn into a snowdrift
of crisp petals tumbling into my lap
under the Singer where I sat shuffling

impatiently to the machine's rhythmic rattle,
mesmerized by my mother's puffed-up feet
on the treadle,
my brother's whining cry...
just out of shot.


copyright © Caroline Grace 2011