Heidi Seeking

I am like that towhead curly-locked child

stolen from the mountain.  She walked in her sleep

languished, grew pale.  I too, though abandoning

no wildflowers, runty goatling or flip-coined

Santa-curmudgeon only an innocent could crave.

Or did I?

(Someone did once make me a chair,

fed me cheese, and fashioned a bed of golden hay

with which to spin my dreams.)

Regardless, how I still blame that old fart for

creating an orphan, for his mean, irascible self,

for saying “let the runt die.”

How little he deserved redemption, yet plucked the prize.

Perhaps it is that I am neither child nor fictive: 

life grows one down,

our smiles all jaundice,

if we even keep our teeth;

in the end, our haystacks pack and brown.

Copyright Julianza Shavin 2008