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Myra Schneider

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Celebration

Plump as the new breasts
of a girl of thirteen, softly purple
as veins that river-map flesh,
the figs rest in twin cups
of clear plastic.  Gently
I set the two nests on my dresser

where dove-mauve petals are closed
as nuns behind gateless walls,
where a girl of six on a postcard
has escaped her severe mother
in a formal garden by weaving dreams,
doesn’t see her little sisters, twins
in powder-puff pink, are dissolving
into the terrace’s coral sand.

The three small girls are as magical
as my friend’s writing on the card.
It twirls the figures to the horizon,
shedding light on layers of feeling
intangible as the moment of opening out,
as a glimpse of my lost, confused self

at the outset of the thirty years
the flowers celebrate.  Above them
yellow cupboard doors are ajar.
On worktops cutlery, cups lie untidily,
out of place as feelings often are.
But it doesn’t matter.  What matters
are the colours flooding my senses
like love - life, being alive.

Page(s) 38

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