Storybook Summer

She's the pretty cousin with freckles
who comes to visit every summer,

who unpacks her things upstairs
while we wait for her to appear
in her fluttering dress and straw hat
shading bouncy copper curls.

She brings her Pollyanna optimism
and the wide-eyed innocence
of a Becky Thatcher, hankering
for adventure beyond the garden gate.

Or she baskets her charms like
Lady Guinevere, beckoning along
gossamer paths where wending breezes
comb the coats of willows haunted.

Today she is Anne of the Island,
reading her book on the beach
as seagulls punctuate the page turning.

Her imagination hoists my own,
high as the cliffs of red sandstone,
chapter after chapter...
 

Lisa Lindsey