Missouri Childhood

                                                 Missouri Childhood      

                                   Once I was young under the locust trees

                                              And living in sultry Missouri.

I climbed down the creaky oak stairway

 I stole away out the door.

Outdoors was my domain in those summer days.

I was a slender child in Columbia, Missouri

Playing in the daisy dappled meadows

And skating down the knee scabbed pavement.

Barefoot on the grassy lawn.

 Missouri cicadas buzzed all the night long.

So I lay on the clover strewn lawn

And  gazed up at the starry night

Breathed  locust blossom scented air—

And I went to bed dreaming of ghost ships

Circling the globe on sea currents

As horned owls flew past my open windows.

Then time carried me far away

From places where I liked to play--

Looks like I am in Michigan to stay.

Water in a clear babbling creek

Changes course

And sings as it flows along—songs of

 Where it has been

And what is yet to be.

Another Poem of Mine

Dark Memories

Locusts buzz Missouri Missouri Missouri

In the trees above.

Their empty shells cling to thin bark

Like cast off suits of armor—

Hinged with sightless moon eyes.

All night crickets chirp like stars

And we lay on the grass—

Too hot to go to bed upstairs.

In the moonlight fat bodied moths

With huge wings:

luna clear as moonlight

 polyphemous, with owlish blue eyes,

cecropia mottled with gold

Sip from flowers that scent the humid air.

We hear blinking of lightening bugs

And the secret sound of earthworms

Tunneling mazes below our blankets.

And we listen to ears of corn growing

In the Victory garden.

Their silken threads gossip of

Mayans and Pottawatomis.

We can hear

The trumpet vine’s brassy blare

And fox hounds baying near Hinkson Creek

Far far away.

Dark Memories from Missouri

Dark Memories

 

Locusts buzz Missouri Missouri Missouri

In the trees above.

Their empty shells cling to thin bark

Like cast off suits of armor—

Hinged with sightless moon eyes.

 

All night crickets chirp like stars

And we lay on the grass—

Too hot to go to bed upstairs.

 

In the moonlight fat bodied moths

With huge wings:

luna clear as moonlight

 polyphemous, with owlish blue eyes,

cecropia mottled with gold

Sip from flowers that scent the humid air.

We hear the blinking of lightening bugs

And the secret sound of earthworms

Tunneling mazes below our blankets.

 

And we listen to ears of corn growing

In the Victory garden.

Their silken threads gossip of

Mayans and Pottawatomis.

We can hear

The trumpet vine’s brassy blare

And fox hounds baying near Hinkson Creek

Far far away.

 

                                                --Barbara Spring

 

When I was a kid I lived in Columbia, Missouri.  I have vivid memories of living there. 
 Below, my watercolor of a luna moth.