If your bearded friend <br />helps you catch the trout <br />barehanded <br />in the pool of the dream <br />and you carry it in his pail <br />barefoot <br />up the rocky stream <br />to the playhouse where he fries it in his pan; <br />if you snip the dill <br />for the carrots and then swim <br />until your lips are bluer than the lake <br />where will it take you? <br />Not anywhere as pure <br />and primal as these sunstruck days <br />sistered by starstruck nights. <br />Don’t cloud the drowning <br />brightness of your eyes, <br />don’t answer my asking look <br />with anything but the truth, <br />don’t spill the fresh-picked <br />raspberries on the car seat <br />and stain your shirt with indelible blood. <br /> <br />Or spill them, darling. <br />How else will you know <br />the color of crushed time; <br />how else will you feel <br />what it is to change and remember, <br />to lose and absorb <br />this summer inside you, <br />xylem and phloem of your leafy future <br />already starting to spread its shade above us?<br /><br />Jonathan Galassi<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/girlhood/
