Do You Mean Me?

Are those soft words meant for me?
Is it now safe to settle into tranquility?
Icy rains ahead on roads fog-wrapped
Fleeing a love wherein I was once trapped.
Twelfth Night revelers muster at the Carrollton barn
Their annual trek to recover their childhood yarn:

Hey, throw me something mister!
Hey, don’t look that way at my sister!
Meet me at The Avenue and Seventh
Of course! Bring your cousin Kenneth!
Doubloons, cups, beads, catch the daylight;
Oh baby, kiss me good; sweetie, hug me tight.

And so Hump Day with ashes full arrives
And recriminations cut with dull knives—
I only kissed her once on a day care forgot.
We’re done, that’s it, you’d rather not—
Why is life in the thirties so stupid?
Aren’t we adults, who killed Cupid?

Why do we think ourselves
Into such boxes of darkness,
Into that snare of wrong turns;
To put down hard roots
Into a newer unloved land;
Grasping, weak and missing—
Another lost kite string over the hedge;
Another lost thing we swore to keep;
Living a clueless life over the edge
As now I lay me down to sleep?

Are those soft words meant for me?
Is it now safe to settle into tranquility?
Diseases and ruin now arrive to drag us back home.
My armor was never silver but warehouse chrome.
O, to die in Ashland, intox’ed by her clackety-clack.
Just to home return, but you can never ever go back.

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It’s “Sally Gossamer Wingstep”

Sally Gossamer Wingstep really kinda hates her name—
Why not Prudence or Eleanor?
Something with a little heft or fame?
“Sally” is so so simple, and just a bit syrupy
Like someone maybe alien or from part of Mississippi!

Sally Gossamer Wingstep loves her German cousin’s name—
Katja Bunche Starlight!
Now THAT sounds like someone of real fame.
“Sally” just slumps all over, like an overlarge butt,
Like someone pretty rustic from the environs of Connecticut.

Sally Gossamer Wingstep would like to know your name—
Alexander? Margaret? Lillian? Alphonse?
Changing hers might be part of the game.
For now she’s just “Sally,” sad but too true,
Now, if she can just get over this horrid flu!

What would Ferena Ashbury say on National Poem Day?

It was one of those determined, inquisitive, tussle-headed boys;
Should she hazard a kiss to find out what he knows?
Dropping down from the Queen’s Tree on Honeysuckle Ridge
Sally Gossamer Wingstep bussed him one right on the nose!
First crinkled into asterisks, then the eye lids slid wide open.
The boy got up from his bedroom willow copse,
While Sally regarded safely from behind a toadstool—
A lad all alone out here? Where’s his Pops?
A half-walk whistle slung low caught her sharp ear:
Sally saw Evelyn over by the ‘Herroyalship’s Tree’.
Sally whipped over to her cousin’s hideaway.
Alright, so now we caught-lost number three.
Evelyn Eagle Wingtip was shaking like a leaf;
“What’s ever is the matter, Eve?
Why are you in such so evident grief?”
“Oh Sally, that boy chased me all morn.
He followed me into our fairie dome;
Now he is oh, so, so lost
And cannot find his way home.”
Sally then thunk some deep thoughts—
Then, smiling, beamed, “Not to worry!
We’ll just call upon our own sage fairie
And spin a spell taught by our Ferena Ashbury!”
Arm and wingarm together they spun
Ascatterin’ fairy dust and achanting as one:

“Take us where the willows glow,
Away from thy Darkness know.”

The boy wheeled and then headed back towards camp
Missing the fairies shrieking glee of joy.
Twas an older spell for the fairly Lost:
Kitten, pony, or overly-determined little boy.
Sally and Eve flew off, soaring on up high
Back to their own warm abodes in Fairie Dome;
Happy the boy was headed in the right way,
And they too were safe, aheaded home.

–thanks to Lillian Patricia Perkins Fedoroff for loaning me Ferena Ashbury
(and a line or two) as a character for this poem for National Poem Day 2015