BEFORE ALL OUR LIVES BEGAN TO CHANGE

Before all our lives began to change

time was stretched between holidays like

carnavale lights and summer lasted forever

every year until Labor Day mysteriously

arrived again to change living to another circle

 

It seemed we played all the time — hair cuts on

darby horses and watermelon seed fights, building

castles of sand and jelly fish oozing against the

jetties, discovering the nest holes of horseshoe

crabs below the high tide line, and snow forts drifted

three stories every January and February, sledding

hellions down Cooperstown Road, the cold and snowflakes

cutting younger cheeks, with the excruciating pleasure

to do it, again     Playing “I have a little umbrella,”

dragging the chair covers across the sand like dragon tails

or lizards or princesses     Shrieking to begin hide-and-seek,

crouched under the crocheted orange and blue and brown

comforter — dying to be found and hoping that we would

never be discovered, because that discovery always

ended in a serious session of being tickled until we

could not breathe

 

But, then, living changed us into other circles,

other places, other people.

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Dedicated ~ In Love and Memory to: Barbara Dunn Blossom, Genevieve Dunn, Helen Smith Dunn, Mahlon H. Dunn, Jr., Tacy Dunn SanAntonio

(c) 1997 Jessan Dunn (DeCredico) Otis ~ RHODE ISLAND WOMEN SPEAK: An Anthology of Authors and Artists, The Rhode Island Committee, The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), Ed. Rosemary W. Prisco, p.19.

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