For Heather
~
Sandy, twelve and freckled,
beside her summer window lay in sheets and starshine
one sparkling night in Utah.
As children often will she watched for sleep
with wide soft eyes
while
a dream-sprite sat in a silvery shape
(draw-kneed and elbow-hugged)
with spirited chin supposing its still still face
and its bronze, bent back bookending the jamb where
her windowsill junctured the world.
Like a moon on her pillow the clear night paled
round her prone petition to sleep.
The dream-sprite waited without a wink
while her memory unraveled, wound down her day,
expunged and exhausted her play……
She retouched the breakfast that morning `ere her
father departed for work;
the ride on her pony in the bleak brush which boasted
and hid an abundance of life;
the snake by the clothes line and her mother’s
quick fear as she ran for the hoe;
the giving of a bath to her mixture-bred dog;
the calm feel of perfect pleasure when, before dinner,
her mother revealed how a big girl
might, sitting this way, manicure nails;
and other events of rural routine.
She did not see the dream-sprite waiting.
She was not really
watching for sleep. It was nice and pleasing to, still on a pillow,
let her feelings for memories play lazily and freely
among stars in the satin night sky.
School would start next month in Green River and
she would become another year older
in the ocherous landscapes of autumnal Utah.
Terry would be there; Terry who
helped his father hunt coyotes for bounty; Terry, thirteen and
thrilling in bone-white teeth and black hair.
Terry, whose awkward profile struck her like lightning
on Soldier’s Summit at the church outing last week
when the world lay all and forever around them;
Terry, above far-below valleys which
back-dropped their innocence,
throwing stones down the mountain with boys….
She did not think to herself as sleep waited,
“I am thinking of Terry and his image is giving me pleasure.”
She did not know how the
metamulch of mentality engages the orbits of glands.
She did not know the questions of adulthood
about diet, blood chemistry, powers of will. She simply felt
with the invisible fingers of her soul
her excitement in knowing Terry while starshine splashed
through the window, and sleep grew
weary in waiting.
When she awakened she knew she had been somewhere,
somewhere even farther away
and more magical
than Salt Lake City or San Francisco.
