Why,
If I had a choice of
Who to be,
Where to live,
What moment in time to capture,
It would be the waif-like
Gamine
Surfacing from the weeds and brambles
To help grand pere
Collect wood for a long winter’s frost.

Why she, not me?
Innocence, of course,
Untouched, unsullied, undamaged
By the ways of the world.

For years, painted to capture my soul in the
Calling, the longing
Of a perfection
Gone for centuries.

She, all truth or an allusion
We are wedded in a dress.
I long for mine to be pure
And blue.

Her small hand barely holding a wild flower
For fear of clutching
Too tightly.

A tiny wren would know.

Charlene James-Duguid