Thomas Wolfe was right about going home
my once idyllic, peaceful valley
my scene inside an Easter egg
gone with its shadows
1950 in Millbrae, California
the town new, wide open
deer walking our creek in the backyard
no fences, everything free
a neighborhood of mushroom houses
sitting like Chinese ladies
with big round sun hats
overlooking their crops in the heat
you don’t have to go down
between the black spaces
to see the current lack of color
revisiting brings me to tears
no more shredded clouds
no more waterfalls
no more liquid refreshments for statue birds
who would vogue like Madonna
grazing on a velvet green rug
dirty water has seeped beneath the soil
draining life as I knew it
fish faces now gasp
at the base of trees
I feel their need
I breathe their gill air
lightless lanterns grow like berries
pinata-filled with the ocean’s roar
among beached whales
among my splintered memories
I still dream of the bay peninsula
the darkling sky
the green arc of a rare night rainbow
I walk along the paths
remembering crayon colors
displaying the lost art of protean
I switch off the sun
pull down the deadly nightshade
climb the skeletal tree
and sleep with the frog

—Based on the cover of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring *

Gloria Keeley

is a graduate of San Francisco State University with a BA and MA in Creative Writing. She currently volunteers at the grammar school she attended, teaching poetry writing to third graders. Her work has appeared in Spoon River Poetry Review, Chiron, Slipstream, The MacGuffin, Midnight Circus, Orbis, Stillwater, Ember: A Journal Of Luminous Things, El Portal, and other venues.