Nancy: Society has gained so much now that the signposts shown to children no longer point girls down one path, boys down another. At least I hope not.
Milestone
Little skinny bones girl
sitting there crying on her
birthday, her Mama just
told her she was gonna
grow up and be a woman
and it settled on her all at once
how life might not be a big
tree stretching up, some branchy
old catalpa or tall oak, but
a long walk counting months,
holding her breath and counting –
and that was the same summer that
the boys took the raft she'd worked
on down to the creek and paddled
it as far as the waterfall
and she heard them talking about it
later.
Alan: Time speaks a foreign language. I’m left guessing at its meaning in a rough translation.
Lost In The Scatter Of Light
Time does not pass, it sinks.
Not like traffic passing on the busy street
that runs past the houses of our selves.
Not like the slow-moving freight train
with its endless, intriguing box cars,
mysterious gondolas of days,
passing as we wait, impatient, at the crossing.
Time sinks. We feel it
in the treetops of childhood, easy chairs of old age.
Even when we ignore it we feel it,
busy as we are, as we make ourselves to be.
We sense it sinking away out of sight
like light beams sinking below the surface
of the sea.
Just as a child, staring over the side of a small boat into calm water
watches, fascinated and a little afraid
of the beckoning scatter, we feel ourselves
too, drawn downward
into the dark.
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