Growing Up

by Lee Ellen Shoemaker

Photograph by Jane Edberg, copyright 2023, all rights reserved.

Brass chords sound. “Hi-Ho, Silver! Away!”

I close my eyes. Imagine.

Riding

the wild shining

without armor

a quest,

adventure,

windswept hair,

sun colored face,

the chase.

I’m back

on the stoop eating an orange.

A gnat follows a drop of juice.

I watch it dream of me?

My chimera returns

daydreaming,

I focus

where I want.

I see

scribbled notes, line drawings, journals,

never organized.

Dropped school, left jobs, got fired.

The cosmos possessed me

where I headed

to escape, to explore, to create

worlds other than this one,

make sense my place,

dream, imagine, create.

I must.