Beautiful Basics

Today's PAD challenge; write a back to basics poem

Creek-song winds lazy, like honey-gold dream

Locust whines high in bronze willow-limb tent

August noon, hazy, sultry-sweet requiem

Trickles to vaults of each summer soon spent

Childhood sprawls endless beneath bare brown feet

Mother calls ‘dinner’, baby spills his milk

Farmer is whistling in dusk’s dying heat

Moments fill archives with silver-soft silk

Screen door slams twenty or more times a day

Heaven splays fretwork of shadow on grass

Where on its dappled quilt innocence plays

Not knowing yet how swift youth’s summers pass

Mother taps stove-pipe and calls, ‘rise and shine’

Oatmeal to water; breakfast in an hour

We splash through dawn calling co’ boss’ ‘milking-time’

Bessie is slow, her tail flings brawny shower

Creek-song winds lazy into the sunset

Childhood and motherhood soon coalesce

Oatmeal to water, sonny spills his milk

Mother recalls simple basics; life’s best

© Janet Martin