A Waban Girl

A Waban Girl


Enormous oaks
with dark curled leaves,
trunks thick enough to hide
behind, filtered moonlight
dappling through, casting
mysterious wavy shadows on you,
It’s our first walk on an early
spring night and I want to hold
your hand, which I do,
but also I want to run about and
play hide and seek
hiding under that thorny,
vine-covered arbor,
and lie together on the spring
grass ground and squeeze you
closer and closer.

The dog at the window is fierce and growls
and would shake our cotton sweaters
back and forth with his shark-toothed mouth,
if we didn’t rush down the hill,
breathing hard,
leather pounding cement,
be gone.

Your face is beautiful in the moonlight,
brushed with cream, camellias,
whiskers and shadows,
as we run under the brilliant lantern.
The world is still ahead of us.

Rounding the corner,
I hear an old clock chime 12 ‘o clock.
My father’s peering out the front door,
urgently calling to me to come home.