Childhood

Childhood

I saw the fireflies in the night,
recall sleeping on the ground near elders and cousins,
knew the fullness of our supper washed in water near the shelter,
gathered with them at the fire to hear the stories of the elders,
heard their laughter.

There were presents for the stranger when we gathered all together.
Needles spilled from pines between the houses that she built us.
Daughters cowed to mothers
Who cowed to elders, never others.
Knolls stood out in glory in amber autumn bluster.
Spirits shaped in hollows in the heaviness of twilight.
Deer and rabbit slept outside the ring of firelight.

There was god out on the landscape poised and full with knowing.
God was there at night in secret rites of elders
I flew with breezes stirred in trees that towered,
was intent on signs of lodgers in the fallen pines rotting,
believed that I was whole with every change approaching.

Now I’m not certain, I’m not so sure
I don’t see them anymore.
Now I know I didn’t know,
And I’m not well.
Time and death have left me in darkness.
I can’t reclaim it, I’m confounded
And surrounded by these ghosts.