Traveling Through Time

 

An armchair traveler she is now,
traveling
traveling
all the way back

to those soft sweet summers
at the very beginning
of time.

These days

all her running is done in reverse,

spooling backwards through 

the Land of Memory

to that wartime cottage,
seventy-three years gone,

flowerboxes at the windows,

wildflowers and weeping willow,
pinks, sweet peas
and hollyhocks
out back.
And roses twined over the arched trellis
out front, where she'd swing
on the gate, late afternoons,
waiting for her parents
to come.

One did not need valerian then;

the silence and peace indoors,
and the loud, ticking clock,

put that small child to sleep

through long hot midday hours.

She remembers well
how safe she felt,

and cherished, the comfort of

her grandma's big, womanly body

next to her in the bottom bunk

as she drifted off
to dreamland
in the one place on earth
where she was never afraid.

for Shay's Word List: Spill Simmer Falter Wither