Childhood Suite
Aquamarine. My birth as pale and blue as eyes
as seas as stones. Two iridescent fish
nibbling at each other’s tails
riding the river’s churn. A father’s gaze.
Out on the ocean a bathysphere plunges
until ink swallows the light sky to indigo.
Lazy updrift through waves of phosphorescence.
Plankton, krill. A cirrus day.
Gold. Dragon hoard piled high deep under the mountain
in the book with the torn cardboard cover.
Shiny foil medals for comportment, good citizenship,
and at the top of a page of pencilled letters
a tiny five-point star for excellence. Chosen crayon
for crowns and scepters. Spangles and sequins
glittering in the tall glass button jar. Buttercup, goldenrod,
sunbright petals around a lion’s friendly face.
Scarlet. Stiff crinoline petticoat under flared black
satin dress. Her lipstick: unapologetic
crimson. Lacquered hollyberries on the Christmas
brooch pinned each year to the collar
of her winter coat. Patterned red apron,
in the yellow kitchen. Currant juice, dripping
its slow transfusion through a cheesecloth bag
into a deep white bowl.
Olive. Scratchy army blanket, coated in doghair, tossed
in the wayback, for picnics and emergencies.
Occasionally extra weight on a bed in winter. Or padding
for the fold-up wood-and-canvas cot kept
on a basement shelf. Word association for olive : drab.
Word association for army : War. Things from before
like Morse code and cigarettes. Mute fragments
of a father’s story he would never tell.
Silver. Filigree of lichen catching sun, glint of aspen
in the brook’s cascade. I’m slowly crushing
mountain mint between a finger and a thumb,
gingerly tonguing two new shiny fillings
tamped deep into their cavities. Sometimes I wake
from dreams of indigo to moonlight
on the sheets. At other times the ink runs deeply
dark from my pen’s bright nib.