Sheila's Dribs 'n Drabs

Why did you leave me, dear sunshine, dear summer? Now you’ve done a runner And spring is the springing of rain Come back sunbeams again.

Fallen leaves and acorns lie Beneath a gray November sky Where squirrel piles his treasure high Till spring is sprung from where the autumn died. With thanks for hope

Leaves of green and red and gold Earthly seasons growing cold Air of ice and wind has told The promise every winter holds Of spring. Written with thanks for the seasons

Green ivy crawls on painted walls while gray clouds hide the sun. Sky’s yellow eye grows dim but leaves shine bright, about to fall. Then red and orange and gold will mold to brown spread on the ground. Green weeds poke through the mass, remind, spring always finds a way.

Alice was pale and frail, ice-blue eyes, corn-silk hair, her baby wail as thin as winter’s wind. Jessica was more like fire, red-haired, green-eyed, with a voice like thunder’s chaos burning trees. Summer and winter, their friends called them, and nobody knew which girl would grow up first. Alice met Dan on a clear ice-cold dawn, pale clouds puffing high through waves of a bright blue sky. But thunderstorms and Jessica punched them apart. Still Alice’s heart was wisely grown. She watched the seasons patiently, sits now by Dan's warm fire in spring while Jessica, autumn cold, stays lonely outside.

Mornings grow lighter now that winter’s passed. She lifts her head by fading moon and sees how shapes match scent and sound at last; no more bright shining orb she howled at loudly through the night. The owner clips the leash and leads her out. New growth’s sweet green and dew-tipped mud slip soft between her toes while squirrels hide and birds glide merrily. Her fellows prance and sniff delightedly. “Home now,” the owners cry and lead her back. Inside she shakes the water from her fur, lies on the sofa where she’ll sleep again, till night, till their return.

In spring the ground was a carpet of green. “Don’t walk on the flowers,” said his mother, and he didn’t; didn’t mean to. In summer the brown grass needled his feet. “But I did wear shoes.” He picked the spikes from his toes, left them loose in the carpet. “Not me,” he said. Fall’s leaves were red and gold like fragile dreams, and slippery. He wasn’t running, he told her, when he fell to the ground. And now a blanket of winter’s white lies heavy, smothering sound. The boy shivers, but didn’t build snowmen without his coat on. “Honest, Mom.”