Egg

When of course you read Mother Goose
you’re in the back seat of the 38 Chevy
your daddy’s driving, mama by his side
many miles to get from Mother Hubbard
to the next tale and one before bedtime
you hear from the source.

My folks know everybody on the way
and some they never knew become old friends
and I can’t wait to get to Grandma’s house,
I go off and make sculptures out of mud,
we go on, and here we are, where the air
smells warm in slow rain.

The riddle of life: what happens to whom
and where the sky opens you always are.
The surgeon who lives in the countryside
goes each year, for two weeks, to aid the lame
in the jungles of Peru. Here at home
is his happiness.

Childhood is an egg that will break open
and who steps into the endless wide world
will go away and stay where the city
reveals what was never seen on the farm.
Could you have foregone this course or that one
and stayed innocent?

When I drive I tell my love the story
of lost children finding the only soul
is only half enough until lovers
learn to live where cold rain drizzles, runs down
window glass, falling upon the threshold
of the floating house.

(29 November 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander