When you look up, you will see the eldest
When you look down, you will see the youngest
And I will be in the middle
You would think I would be seen the most.....
But, I feel like the forgotten one
I am not the oldest, and get to do things first
I am not the youngest, who is cute as can be
I am the one stuck in the middle!!!!!!
So where does that leave me?
I am important too, hear my cry
......
I want to tell you about time, how strangely
it behaves when you haven't got much of it left:
after 60 say, or 70, when you'd think it would
find itself squeezed so hard that like melting
ice it would surely begin to shrink, each day
looking smaller and smaller - well, it's not so.
The rules change, a single hour can grow huge
and quiet, full of reflections like an old river,
......
Your eyes, large as Canada, welcome
this stranger.
We meet in a Juárez train station
where you sat for hours,
your offspring blooming in you
like cactus fruit,
dresses stained where breasts leak,
panties in purses tagged
"Hecho en El Salvador,"
your belts like equators,
......
When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail,
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
When Nag, the wayside cobra, hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can,
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail -
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
......
Even while I dreamed I prayed that what I saw was only fear and no foretelling,
for I saw the last known landscape destroyed for the sake
of the objective, the soil bludgeoned, the rock blasted.
Those who had wanted to go home would never get there now.
I visited the offices where for the sake of the objective the planners planned
at blank desks set in rows. I visited the loud factories
where the machines were made that would drive ever forward
toward the objective. I saw the forest reduced to stumps and gullies; I saw
the poisoned river, the mountain cast into the valley;
......
Mother's there, her eyes are bright,
Papa's beaming by her side,
And in her arms, a bright delight
Baby brother, little bro.
A picture hanging on the wall
Band-Aids plastered after a fall,
Mother's there to cure it all,
And baby brother, little bro
......
Into the woods I strolled one day, with my twin sister,
For if I had left her behind, I'd surely have missed her.
We were looking for wild strawberries, but we got lost,
Under the warm sun shining, as breezes blew very soft.
We wandered for a while, then we sat to rest by a lake,
And after eating strawberries, we saw a talking snake.
He had seen us walking, and he took us partway home,
Then a pink bunny guided us, so we didn't roam alone.
......
high on a hilltop
stands the castle of the wind
in fuchsia rose mists
enchanted fortress
with a broad moat surrounding
child's fairy tale land
palace of bright stars
when the crescent moon's shining
......
I learn lots of pleasant songs at my school,
Songs about blind mice, or stars like jewels,
And animals making sounds, here and there.
On Macdonald Farm, sounds are everywhere!
Sometimes, we sing of luckless Jack and Jill.
Jack had a bad fall, strolling up Bloom Hill.
Then there's a magic dragon, known as 'Puff',
And ring a ring of roses, plunge down soft.
......
Tatters the clown had brought joy to so many;
But of intense personal joys, he had not any.
Hard luck trailed him, as it sometimes will do,
As dark clouds chase the sun, in skies of blue.
He faced various losses, that made him weep,
Deaths and monetary, by getting in too deep!
Children laughed gaily, to see Tatters coming,
As blooms in silver moonlight, most becoming!
......