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Heron Clan: Oct 9, 2022
FAIR DAY
Fair day came, she was all a flitter,
A day in the sun with just her mother.
Her chariot, a stroller, umbrellaed and cramped,
Restrained and buckled, hunched, now encamped,
In transport too small
Her body too tall.
They saw the balloons,
In the air they would zoom,
"Oh, look another one gone up to the sky!"
"Oh, the waste of the money, oh the waste of a five."
"I want one, Mommy, I want one of my own."
"I'll get you one daughter, when we have to go home."
Their money was spent on games of chance,
Winning a few, but really, just losing the cash.
She rode the small rides, Mommy's face flashing by,
Yet, always in her mind, the balloon, how it would fly.
The day got late,
They made their way to the gate.
Mommy bought the balloon, purple, shining, and big,
Then placed the precious string in the palm of her kid.
As her little hand reached for the sky to let it go,
Mommy clamped her big paw down and startled with a, "No!"
"You can let it go at the house, but not at the fair.
"Five dollars aren't meant for a brief little affair."
So, the wailing began and ceased to desist
Until the van brought them home, at the mommy's insist.
Inside the abode, on that hot autumn day,
The little girl wiped all her tears away...
She let go finally, sailed the balloon to the ceiling,
It hit. It bounced gaily, in a loud, latex killing.
They stood in the shards of the rubberized sphere
Purple joy dissolved swiftly into synchronized tears.
Mommy held her daughter closely,
Asked her forgiveness, mostly,
For not letting a toddler's whim
Become the greater wisdom.
To have watched that balloon fly,
To have stood, fixed to that sky,
To have let it all go, in that moment,
To have let it all go, unbroken.
To have let it all go, there-
In the flight of a balloon, you got at the fair.
An Inch and a Smidge
The love letter comes
A poem written in request,
"Write me a poem," beguilingly
she asks.
She wants to be there
in the mind of her
love, rhyming in rhythm,
the cadence of love, on his
tongue, on his cortex.
It’s short and it’s sweet
of the earth-bound roots
of a woman's soul and
her mountains
that he climbed, and sighed. But,
she thinks, a thought,
wants a little bit more, "What
won’t he say." What is it
she won’t see,
in that inch and a smidge
beyond
the last line.
An old favorite:
Brenda (Kidd)
You told me about sex.
Remember when we lived
at the swimming pool?
I can’t get no,
boom, boom, boom, booming
in the dank concession area,
echoing in the open-aired basement.
Satisfaction,
bam bam bam
pounding from the jukebox,
the wah wah wah wah, wah wah
sound, rounding off the pillars, and
the puddled concrete, slick.
That was where we’d go to get our
suicide drinks.
Pushing through the tall chairs,
the teenaged faceless person
would laugh when we’d ask for,
A Suicide, please.
Dispensing all the flavors on tap,
they’d hand it to us in tall paper cups,
straw and shaved ice,
our membership bracelet tags
clinking on the bar's counter top.
That day we sat and talked and sipped
at the metal tables heaped with towels
outside the chain linked fence
surrounding the laughing, screaming children,
splashes and whistles
and the smell of chlorine,
the Alabama sun hidden,
our tongues purple.
I never really liked you.
You made me feel small, dumb,
though I was 2 cup sizes
bigger than you
and sat at the front
of the class.
But, I didn’t know about sex.
I was 12, or almost 12,
Or maybe 10, or beyond 10,
but I didn’t know.
So, with two hands in the air
you showed me, being so knowing,
how sex was done.
You made an ok sign,
held it to the sky,
and pierced it with the index finger
from your other hand.
I rode home,
peddling in a blaze, sick
on suicides,
Rolling Stones, blaring
in my head,
with my new found knowledge.
I never really liked you.
You were my best friend.
