Mine is a pale land:
pale sky, pale sand,
pale sun-bleached everything.
My playground was bare sand
studded with stone and shell
from a long-dead sea.
My playmates were lizards
and quail, my playthings
rocks and my own thoughts.
Some years, winter watered
seeds that slept in the sand,
then spring covered the dunes
with purple verbena, low-growing
flowers with furry leaves
and furry stems. I made bouquets
of them, stumbled over dry gullies
to give them to Mother — a clutch
of sweet-smelling blossoms
that sagged in my sweaty hands.
Tamara Madison is the author of the chapbook “The Belly Remembers”, and two full-length volumes of poetry, “Wild Domestic” and “Moraine,” all published by Pearl Editions. Her work has appeared in Chiron Review, Your Daily Poem, A Year of Being Here, Nerve Cowboy, The Writer’s Almanac and many other publications. She is thrilled to have recently retired from teaching English and French in a Los Angeles high school.
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