BECOMING
Summer is coming: We startle, awake from
long wintery sleep, small figures wrapped in
silent dreams drifting apart, each whispering
sorrowful promises that others cannot hear.
Stifling yawns, rubbing eyes, ready for toasts
dipped in music and poems, facing windows
finally open to the breaking dawn, we write,
quivering in lingering morning chill. We rise,
building worlds of fantastical sizes and shapes,
paving coloured words among garden dwarfs
and hidden dragons, fountains and sprinklers
waiting to take action. We turn, brightened
by the rising sun, in rare nostalgic moments
we reminisce how frightening moon shadows
used to be, spirits from ancient lands where
giants walked and birds cried in their seasonal
migration routes. Sipping cups of black coffee
we savour biscuits made of pale hopes baked
golden brown in ovens powered by patience.
Somewhere in the distance mothers embrace
chubby babies giggling, trying their first steps.
(Image: “What’s in a smile?”, RaisingChildren.net.au)
Voices under the Sun 陽光下的聲音 