Copyright 2007 Jennie Gilling. All Rights Reserved
The fading house
peeled off another layer
for the summer holiday.
Moisture from the night
breathed over long grasses,
a garden with hair
unbrushed and untrimmed.
We'd reclaim territories
under elderly walnuts
and run from clinging
daddy longlegs.
Foreign lands lay beyond
the moss-covered roller,
where clammy toads
attracted and repelled.
Indoors was exotic, colonial.
Both Aunts unfamiliar with children,
their offerings were
Ostrich feathers from India.
While they stayed
in the shadows,
tendrils crept inside
and the world, oblivious,
turned away.
We three would run our fill
up on the chalk Plain,
returning with a harvest
of wild mushrooms -
Red Indians with a basket
of moon-white scalps.