What Children Know
- What Children Know
Dandelions yellow under nails nail coffins shut.The yellow of senses are sensed from a distancewhere pigtails bob and the thickness of June is immortal.
Yellow feet-pajamas, striated and stark prom and pomp, moments of falling, the fallen.
And oh, the melons it takes to bake love,to stir the pot and bide the syrup.
The children of yellow yelling, the sail of hair ribbons, the wisps of hair.
Count the stars, sun the wind and bend the open heart, openlike the inscrutable desires of children at play.
The skips to skipping stones at a riverbed— discovering insects and frogs as freely as yellow in flowers, a yellowing flower, a flow of yells, the yells of yellows.
Kneaded dough rests under sifted flourin the damage of four-and-score,a delivered scroll, handle of scorn.
Rushing in is the child of bread, breaded and baked, the child in want, open hands.
Child, how do you select the good toys? What's the tasteof mud-grass-and-dandelion pies?
How does one lose pi-squared and square-corners, and what's the secret to eating a kernel of corn as if it were just corn? [End Page 45]
Janée J. Baugher is the author of Coordinates of Yes (Ahadada Books, 2010), a collection of ekphrastic and travel poems. Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Baugher holds an MFA from Eastern Washington University and in 2011 presented her work at the Library of Congress. Baugher was awarded a 2012 fellowship at the Island Institute of Sitka, where she will work on a collection of water-themed essays. She teaches literature and creative writing in Seattle at University of Phoenix.
