One day when I was not yet six

I found in the early morning

A baby doll lying lost upon my porch.

I wondered who could have left it there

So naked and alone

 

A chocolate brown round chubby baby doll,

Just the right size for my child hands.

I scooped it up fast from the cold, cold stone

And warmed it in my arms.

 

Carrying it inside, I took clothes from my other dolls

To make my new child feel at home.

I smoothed my hands over her tight black curls

And laid my cheek against the smooth dark rose of hers.

I looked with love into her shining eyes

And smiled my heart at her pink baby smile.

 

My childhood friends, though, thought my baby doll strange

With her dark skin:

They’d never seen brown baby dolls.

I began to wonder why I had never seen

Another sweet brown baby doll

Though I looked in every toy display

Of every store I knew.

 

So, I asked my mama why my baby doll was brown.

And my mama told me

There were mamas and papas

Who were darkly brown

And their babies were deep brown, too, which was why

My orphan baby was so warmly chocolate brown.

 

I did not really understand at all,

But I loved my orphan child of brown

Until I grew too old for dolls.

It was then I learned

There were people afraid of brown,

Who hated Black,

And that white could be an ugly word.

It was then I first knew that I was White.

 

#RaceAwareness #Childhood #DollsandChildhood

Yesterday’s unspent rain

And the night’s dew

Weigh down the sky

Above the mountains.

 

Like wisps of hand-pulled angel-hair,

The fog lies in tufts

Across the eastern ridges.

 

Higher and farther north,

The whited air brooms

Like the tail of the artic fox,

Into the narrow valleys.

 

On the farthest and highest slopes,

The sky-fall lies upon the mountain

As thick and heavy as the fur-rich

Winter coat of the polar bear.

 

The air tastes of frost

And lies upon my cheek

Like the touch of snow.

My breath forms in puffs

Like miniature clouds.

 

As the words I speak

Roll themselves into visibility,

I ponder the weight of them

As they hang for the moment

Before my eyes.

 

What if, I think, I could hold these words,

These thoughts, in my hands as solid objects?

What if it were possible to know the spoken word

As if it were tactile? What then? What would we learn

From examining the shape and texture

Of those word-clouds?

What would they teach us about our world?

 

#WinterandPoetry #CloudsandPoetry

 

“Do you hear? Oh, can’t you hear!”

She whispered in her little sister’s ear.

“There!  Clip, clop…up on the roof!”

The drowzled child beside her

Pulled and pushed herself up

And out of her warm lullaby dream

To hear for real and always

The child magic sounds

Of Christmas Eve night.

They sat with prayerful, eager faces,

Eyes flashing with imagined secret sights.

Could anyone be as lucky as they?

Had any other child been blessed

With such a chance?

“Let’s go see!”

Tiny fingers pushed aside the heavy covers.

“No, you mustn’t!

You’re not supposed to watch him.

He wouldn’t like it.”

Back, back lay the sleepy heads

And soon the quickened heartbeats

Slowed to the hushed pit-pat

Of reindeer hooves waiting,

Patiently waiting for the dawn.

 

#SantaClausMemory #Christmas #ChildhoodPoetry

 

At Christmas time, each year, to this house

came the Chestnut Girl,

Her pockets full of rich brown nuts

…a once-a-year treasure…

to give away, to share.

 

Now Christmas has come again,

the time of chestnuts,

sweet and rare.

But the Chestnut Girl

will not come this year, to this house.

For the one who understood—

the gift,

the giver

and the joy—

that special one has gone.

 

Yet lingering on the crisped winter air,

the image remains:

the Chestnut Girl

with her pockets full of nuts

…the once-a-year treasure…

to give away—to share….

 

#Friendship #Christmas #ChristmasTreats #ChestnutsandPoetry

 

Sunlight dapples the creek with flakes of gold

As each small mirror-ripple rises

To catch the yellow brilliance

Spilling like melting butter

Into the narrow, winding open breach

Exposed between high walls of forest-night.

 

Here is other gold as well: fool’s gold

Pale and brittle, shafting

Brief bright arrows toward the sky,

While a softer, warmer golden hue

Flickers in the creek shallows

Lighting the underside

Where water catches images of the sun.

 

Any visitor here might be excused

For carrying away only fool’s gold

To warm and light a far

Familiar corner deep within a forest-night.

 

Another, more worldly wise

Might pilfer the riches

Hidden in the creek

To purchase furs and fires

To escape an ever present dark.

 

I would hope I would do neither

Upon finding such a golden place.

I hope, Amicoj, I would merely stay.

 

#FriendshipPoetry #NaturePoetry #ValuesandChoices