The Dreaming Hill

Year round, we keep Christmas lights burning in the fireplace.
Today those Fruity Pebble lights sweeten shadows as I stand
Waiting for the morning birds to scratch echoes in the chimney
Against last night's dreams of the past as a mirrored boutique
Filled with knick-knacks I can't afford.

I want to unholster my nursery school water pistol, watermelon
Pink--sling a bandolier of bubble wands across my body,
March into the backyard and retake myself from those fairies
Who are pricing me translucent, empty as the bubbles and the gun,
Hollow of yesterday, unlit.

A perfect, possessable hill they want, blood-stained glass dreams
Outside of which the birds, Wisdom, Gossip, and responsibility,
Peck along the sills where I have been. I have been sold
In the goblin stands that look like antique malls on summer roads
To hagglers with sharper dreams.

This is being posted for Poets United Poetry Pantry #400 and for The Sunday Muse The Muse #3. The image is posted at The Sunday Muse and is far, far too representative (substitute a dog for a cat and a hammock for the couch) for the way I intend to spend this lovely afternoon. Wishing everyone a similarly relaxed Sunday.

-- chrissa