#1 'LEARNING' ---------- Not wanting to stir up the dust Until she is ready For all of it to echo the last time End evaporating like the light In a travel magazine, foreign places And false advertizing; By the time you’ve gotten there That same sun is gone. Even memories get grimed and scratched Exposed to so much blinding negativity That they flare out, fade, spontaneously delete: She wants to save them to last Indefinitely, is the string on the monkey’s leg Dancing, and begging for coins— In the foreign light. And here you do things you would never do Because you are somebody else: Simple logic, simple rules. ---- New rules, but similar Learning again like the kindergarten writ large And the kindness much like light; The smell of warm cookies And a herd. All your life, you never forget the smell of milk cartons [Or the faces on them.] Or wet clover. ---- Other little bodies Like your own: Safe, protected, All together But not at all. Inside your mind you are as far away As the twinkle-twinkle stars Cool, icy, intricate and clean And ceremonious, representative of bigger things. Like being on the other side of the glass Just wanting To Touch someone. But they will not trade their warmth and you cannot give your stars. ----- You accept it now (What else can you do?) They will understand it later. Until then, they will grind you under their heel Calling you a snake, Laughing because they think they are stronger and greater than you Because they play games with other little girls. -------------------------------------------------

#2 ‘This one yours?’, or ‘Shipment from Venus’ ----- Don’t know what to do with us: Too many features for our own good Instruction manual lost in the mail? There isn’t one for everything. Where’s your store tag? Commodity, drudge or plaything? Oh look, it’s a girl in a box. Wonder what she’s been thinking All this time.

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#3 'Legend' -----

I’m only going up the hill Into the backyard space of another April, another June Won’t be gone long .Just have to get this straight With myself We’ve been at it a while. So far I’m not listening. But white snowflakes follow just as certainly As dry dead leaves Sawing to the ground. They were good while they were green, Before they went south. But then they didn’t know what else to be. Besides possibility. --- I’m going over the hill Into the valley below Into the echoing trees And a bubbling cacophony of flowers So I can Stand in the bluebells And laugh. ------------------------------------------------- [These last two are more lucid. They take place post-SERENITY.] -------------------------------------------------

#4 'Aphelion'

Don’t tell me it looks gloomy I have eyes, I can see myself. And did I tell you I’ve noticed it’s started to rain. Somewhere between falling asleep And waking up I decided Flying’s enough. Don’t tell me I haven’t a leg to stand on Because one night I dreampt of wings.

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#5 'Summer's End'

Sunlight through leaves Warm wind birls through the halls Like final schoolbells Pressed into pages The same wind turns Over the worn-down hills And leaves frame her laugh: That one smiling at me, I’m sitting in the same place. Wind’s cousin, parallel storyline But I see someone else A little girl lingering There With shadows like wings. When she looks up Our eyes meet through the glass Like the shine on wet pavement. It’s a strong realization when it comes: Those leaves fell long ago.