USA

lucyday@scarlettanager.com

A FRIENDSHIP
For Diane Freedle, 1943-1994

The day we met, I was three years old and you were eight,
a skinny little girl with blond pigtails. We went inside
your grandparents' house to play. Time went by
more slowly then. The constellations never changed.
We had eons to cut paper dolls and bake cookies.
Playing school, you taught me how to add and read.
My kindergarten teacher thought I was quite a genius.

You hooked me on teen magazines in second grade.
The other kids thought I was pretty strange.
Through long summers, we sang Hit Parader songs
and counted shooting stars at Heavenly Valley.
By your sixteenth birthday, we were already contemplating
colors for bridesmaids' gowns. Time was picking up speed
at an awful rate. So soon the leaves turned brown.
Those weddings came. We had six kids between us
and debated Doctor Spock, Piaget and positive discipline.

When I think of how we've changed, I think of the Earth,
which had its own beginning, how once it was covered
with boiling seas. The mountains were molten rock
that finally burst onto the surface. Now the mountains
are wearing down. Grain by grain, they wash to the sea;
the continents keep shifting. Still, it surprises me to meet
for lunch, two women speaking in hushed tones.
I'm the only one in the restaurant who knows
you're wearing a wig and weak from chemotherapy.

The universe itself keeps changing. New galaxies gather
in the void with spiral arms like the silver pinwheels
we used to blow (remember the hollow stems filled with candy?).
Old stars burn out. Matter is sucked into black holes. Perhaps
we'll meet again in some other realm, perhaps not. Time
is not necessarily linear, though the clock ticks off the hours
in one direction. Even the Milky Way is not forever.
In crisp air, jeweled hummingbirds return to the feeder.

from WILD ONE (Scarlet Tanager Books, 2000)

FOUR PRINCESSES

I. Cinderella

Something has gone awry.
Twenty years after the ball,
my hands are black with soot.
Powdery mounds of ashes
grow higher and higher
the more I sweep.

They rise in gray clouds
at the slightest touch,
billowing, choking me.
It's worse than a crematorium.

I shovel them into bags
and brush them under the rug,
but more and more
rise from the floor
like snow in a Christmas scene
turned upside down.

They fall on my hair,
turning it gray,
and deepen the lines in my face
like an acid rain.

They give me asthma.
I am gagging. I am sick!
Where in the hell
is that rat-faced wimp,
the guy in the gilded suit
with all the pretty words--
that damn prince!


II. Snow White

I might as well be dead.
Already, I rest in my coffin.
It's a pretty glass thing,
clear as a tear
and ringed with flowers.
Every day is a funeral.

I'd like to get up,
but I am paralyzed.
I neither sleep nor dream.
This life isn't much worse, I admit

than keeping house for the little people,
who come around now
wringing their hands and weeping.
They think I'm dead.
As I said before, I might as well be.

I lie here twig-rigid
and cold as an ocean wind.
It will take more than a kiss
to budge me.


III. Sleeping Beauty

I slept for a hundred years
before the prince wakened me.
Those were the best
years of my life.

Valium helps but doesn't bring back
the deep forgetfulness that was mine
before he stuck his thick
tongue in my mouth,
which gave me bronchitis.

Now I raise phlegm
and urge bickering servants to dust
the busts in the great hall
and light the fires
in this drafty castle.

He's never around.
When I crave adventure,
I nestle in a leather wing chair
and flick on the TV.


IV. Rapunzel

I've lived in this Gothic bailiwick
for more than forty years,
reading romance novels
and eating corn chips.
I used to let down my hair each night
and the prince would climb my tresses.

I was young then,
wearing my green dress.
He admired my creamy skin
and the graceful slant of my neck,
but he did not love me.
I grew old in his cold embrace,
watching light flicker
in his brown eyes
flecked with gold.

One night, he didn't come back,
nor the next, nor the next.
Now it's been years
since he was last here,
and when I let my hair down,
only lice and spiders
climb to greet me.

The witch who kept me prisoner
is dead. I'm my own jailer now.
Each night when the stars
ignite, one by one,
I think: Tonight I'll cut my hair,
tonight I'll climb down.

Four Princesses" is from FIRE IN THE GARDEN (Mother's Hen, 1997)

© All Copyright, Lucille Lang Day.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.