A green carpet speckled with the childish yellow
Of dandelions and browsing bees
Is ensconced in my memory
With ever the firmest of holds.
It is the tingle-like freshness
In contrast to
The pencil and paper and crayon crisp
Of early fall’s classroom smell that
Earns this treasure
Its place.
A hillside near the school,
Near enough to accent
That contrast, is
Speckled further by
A swarm of buzzing first-graders
Seated in open forum,
Rejoicing in the failure of structure.
Twigs are tossed;
Six-legged explorers are watched
By inquisitive eyes, ponytails pulled
With an infuriating twist.
A cloud is analyzed.
My painting portrays
Not the typical youth of my age
But the adult appreciation
Of joy – the pleasure
Sipped in delicate contentment –
The ecstasy of cool delight.
The wind toyed with the uncut grass
And wrapped its cool warm arms
About the child in me that knew
Heaven would be made like this for me –
Only recess would be all day long
I stared idly for a moment
At the formal halls close by
And smiled at how distance they were.
I rolled in the vert,
With both arms hugged the world,
And then presented myself to the sky.
Patternless waves of nodding stems
Stippled with the tiny sprigs
Drowned my spirit with the joy of being;
I was wrapped in beauty and splendor that
Only a child bears witness to.
Complex equations and factored polynomials
That joust for a place in my day
Compete with Pythagorean Triplets
And emotionless predicate calculus. Of course,
I’m speaking of me today.
And hiding under a decimal or two
Is this absurd little contradiction,
Proclaiming that, in spite of myself,
I’m really not all just fact.
R.H. MacDonald
18 Aug 1993
