Page 9 - Contrast1965Spring

Children play beneath the trees
In the sun-hatched shade of the morning,
Playing among the dark trunks
Or running through twisted clumps of grass

And day lillies glowing amber in the sun.

Or they sit on a back porch
On bare boards and chipped paint
Blowing soap bubbles with a wire hoop pipe,

Watching rhe rn float in the air -

A myriad reverse rainbows in the sun
The bubbles break on the air
To form tiny specks of soapy slime'

That smarts the eyes
And calls forth tears for past bea uty.

Or they build mock forts behind the trellis of the climbing rose,
Or play Indian among the scattered rocks of an old ravine

Where lichen grow green in the summer's sun.

v

Two boys sit beneath the gray of a clouded sky playground
And lean against the gray chain fence of a concrete

Amid the rubble of a city.

Two boys sit
Playing nothing
Talking of nothing much - talking of life,
Oblivious of color
Until someone passing says one is white and the other isn't,
And they go their ways in confusion,

Each wi shing he were something he isn't,
Wishing the world were different.

VI.

Four words on a page
Waiting for a 'poem to follow.

Can a rose lie?

But only words can lie, ,'
Or distort,

Or mislead,
Or express, .
The desire to find truth.

,\

Nancy Ann Mengel'

7