Arcadia in the Catskills

Neither sheep nor shepherds populate the canvasses

of the Hudson River School of painters and Mom

concurs in her renderings of river banks where spring-

flowering apple and cherry orchards turn to small fruit

by the 4^th of July when the corn is knee high and heat

tricks maple leaves into early oranges among pine-needled

forests where grew The Climbing Tree.   

Mom drew the long-limbed pine while I watched 

chipmunks and fairies run and hide from me 

in reindeer-mossed hobbit homes under the brown-skinned 

roots of the ancient tree surrounded with rattlesnake-filled

stone walls where cows once grazed in the old days. 

I climbed quietly to a still low limb to scout until pine  

tickled my nose into A Sneeze.

Later I dreamed untamed forests full of elves, lost

ghosts knocking on our walls and windows, and magic

so loud I couldn’t sleep--indeed the morning footprints

dotted across the driveway could have been ghost horses

not the deer trespassing to chew lettuce

with the rabbits, little Peter Cotton tail in the lead

as they ran before The Morning Sun

I leaned my rake against the fence, clothes pinned

the towels on the line until they swept the ground,

and scolded the crows and red-winged blackbirds,

robins, starlings and swifts not to eat

the mulberries over the fresh wash and to leave

some on the tree for me to have with milk before

I visited the climbing tree.

Was it gone?  Did it Brigadoon away when the night  

moon played tricks on pathways and tree limbs?

One more rise to climb and then another—

I knew it was closer yesterday but not as close as when

my older brother or mom came along to play or when

the faeries slipped a dime under my pillow

in exchange for a tooth.

Where did the faeries put the teeth?  I scuffed

the thick mat of rusty needles to find them,

reached into nooks and climbed higher to see

if they used my teeth up in the tree –and I knew

mom laughed at me, but she also told me stories

of when my grandfather’s geese chased her,  bit her

heels and she ran home

Then  Rip Van Winkle started bowling and skies
turned angry with fat cheeks blowing hard to shake us
from the limbs--and this time everyone ran: elves
and faeries, mom and brother and me, deer, rabbit,
horses, ghosts, leaves and rattlesnakes just like
the cards in Alice’s trial leaping and falling for shelter,
towels, naps and dreams.

Copyright © 2012 S.L.Chast
Chosen for book 11/2013

Heart in hand, I just posted this to dVerse's "Where in the World AM I?-Meeting the Bar."  
In the picture I am the Scout-look-alike on the right.