While chaos starts its reign
You sit in your pretty little corner,
Lacy and ribboned
Pink.
You play jacks.
Teach yourself
To pick up the pieces.

Chaos begins a heavier rain.
You sIt at your windowpane
Play cat’s cradle.
Learn to untie the
Confusing knots of being.

You spread a favorite
Wooden puzzle
Evenly on your counterpane
Believing this four-postered
Canopy, a safe haven for thought.

The dolls and trucks
Cabineted,
No time to let your
Thoughts wander
While work stands waiting.

A top spinning teaches you balance
Learn it, remember it well.

Your tIn soldiers climbing
Up the parapet,
Swimming the moat,
Arming the catapult with
Flower petals,
Their lone ammunition.

Elders whistle down the wind,
Talk the solutions to death, while
You keep my books well-read,
Flute well-played,
Voice well-sung,
Waiting.

Eager for the perfect word
To appear, solve the mess they made.

You prepare, young as you are,
But wise as a Galapagos tortoise.

Your obligation
To keep aeroplanes suspended
Firmly in the blue.

You watch the bubbles burst.

Little girl time gone by, before
You learn to tie your shoe.

Charlene James-Duguid
Amissville, Virginia
August 24,2018