Back and Forth

When I was young---

I learned to sew pistachio and peach squares together in a pyramid

and it was all so beautiful

I saw things differently then---

as I suppose was the case with many

in the decade where we lived on paper pages with crayon moons and clouds

When we were certain there were houses made of stones

in the middle of an unnamed forest

and everything in our mind was some shade of green

I liked to make tents with my needle and thread

and streamers and lie on pillows so I could look upward

because that's when I was happy

and I had no one to answer to but the light switch

I was blissfully unaware of when it would come to an end

---as most childhoods do, those days drifted into the ether of ambivalence

But it was today---

when I spotted a lonely tree in the snow

and the memory of something took my breath away

---it was then that I realized the magnificence of it all