Misplaced Seasons

Dark brown trees
Trunks of rough and striated bark
First dewy flakes of autumnal snow
Cling to the golden grasses
of summer gone

The furnace sputters forth
The smell of hot, burnt dust
I sprawl on the knobby carpet
Bare feet warm despite the emergence
of winter's blight

About me plastic ponies strewn
Pinks and blues and lavenders
Tying petite braids with bitty ribbons
Constantly distracted by the season's unfolding
Beyond the window glass

Those same flakes soften
As molten marshmallows in an oven's swelter
Sun dogs dance beside their master star
and rivers run below the ice
Spring green blades soak and grow

Walking home from school
Mud and Puddle irresistible alike
The earth again has smells
of moss and dirt and humidity
Insinuating aromas yet to blossom

Runoffs merge into temporary ponds
A deeper blue than winter can contain
In the mainstream floats a drowning mouse
Watered hair clumped upon its back
It no longer expects reprieve

A broken branch swollen with russet buds
Long enough to reach the wretched victim
With greatest care and sweetest seed
He will roam the honeyed summer again
A rodent's salvation my most urgent concern

Gone are the days of unsullied existence
Naive...angelic...pure and lily white
Worries were so minor compared to others
Was I sheltered so from angst
Was it me or everyone

Do all people get such times of laxity
Primitiveness and innocence
Are all lives touched by such simplicity
Such heavenly bliss of inexperience
A backyard fence to shield

With a protector's death comes alien trauma
And a broken garden gate
A young daughter's loss is a wider view
of sorrow's blackened hole
Wisdom comes, but at what cost

The holiest land is filled with strife
and we need not go so far
People cheat and steal and lie
Within my own courtyard
Catastrophe tints my eyes to see

What can I do to head us back
To eras of worries smaller than these
When my brother had a larger share
and still more red than orange
Injustice had such a lesser consequence

Can we all not be as children
Can we all not get along
Can we please go back to clearer skies
Watching ants and bees and butterflies
Together...hand in hand