Alone in yellow bird sunlight
the sea curls around my hips
as we dance through ghosts.
In the silver shadow tipped waves
I see visions of a much younger me,
hungry for life beyond corn fields,
but chained to dirt road poverty
that feared the world beyond gravel.
Funny and bold, miserable and hopeful,
I walked the muscle memory of ancestors
who didn’t trust anything beyond
the length of a day nor dream higher
than their arms could reach.
Impatient dandelion in stoic I gambled
on a carnival horizon where rhyme and reason
didn’t have to make sense nor questions
keep me immobile when my spirit said run.
On the long way to wherever the highway
became my gin and tonic.
Happy to feed imagination everything
from tiny seeds of roadside picnics
to city frames of glass and steel I discovered
lovely could be wisteria growing wild on a picket fence
or the smile of a stranger passing me on a sidewalk…
Like a magician pulling me out of a trance
a seagull calls from the blue above me.
I speak goodbye to ghosts, slip back
into my aged skin, look out across the waves
and consider there’s still a lot of dreams
in me before my sun sets.
©Susie Clevenger 2022
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