moonbridgebooks

My favorite perfume is in the air! The ‘Miss Kim’ lilac is blooming. When I was a kid, our backyard was lined with the old-fashioned lilacs, Syringa vulgaris – an ugly name for a tall scrubby shrub whose sturdy purple flowers are much more impressive than the tiny, floppy ones of the French lilacs in today’s gardens. The scent of lilacs in the breeze brings me back to warm sunny days of childhood. What scent brings out memories for you?

I stood among the crooked trunks
Of old lilacs, and disappeared
In blue-green teardrop leaves
Shining cool in the warm sun.
All was silent except for bees
dressing themselves in purple,
While humming happy work songs.
A thick, sweet perfume,
Like heaven’s breath,
Floated in the soft breeze.

I was a brown doe
Hiding from the hunter, my mother,
Who, if she found me,
Would undoubtedly wonder
Why I was standing there
Like an idiot,
And call me in for chores
Or something else mundane.
I was sure she could not see
the wild woods
Of my imagination.

Linda Austin
“Cherry Blossoms in Twilight”
http://www.moonbridgebooks.com

April 15 is the last average frost date for the St. Louis area, so it’s time to glory in alyssum and salvias. My youngest child and I went flower shopping today, coming home with pots of colorful annuals – and one fern. I taught my daughter how to transplant. I do not remember planting anything in the yard of my childhood home – it was filled with woody plants and perennials – but I do vaguely remember hoeing out a tiny vegetable garden hidden in the back corner. Not that fun when you don’t like tomatoes. In our backyard here, I keep some big pots and some open ground for annuals, and both my girls have enjoyed choosing and planting their own flowers. Weeding? That’s a different story. Do you have any stories of gardening as a child?

She moved the cart
Among rows of color,
Carefully choosing her paints.
At home I taught her
How to mix the media,
And loosen any tightness
So the roots of her ideas
Would be free to spread.
She placed her colors
Far enough apart to grow fully,
Without too much crowding.
Then she watered them,
And hoped they would bloom
Into a painting for butterflies.

Linda Austin
“Cherry Blossoms in Twilight”
http://www.moonbridgebooks.com

It’s time to celebrate libraries – well, more than usual. This week is National Library Week and @yourlibrary asks us to write a library-themed “twaiku” (haiku posted on Twitter). When I was a kid, my dad took my sister and I to the big public library about every other week, and we kids would each fill up a paper grocery sack full of books. And read them all by the time we returned again! Our mom would get mad at us for reading too much instead of doing something active and useful, like chores. Do you have library memories?

The library steps
Led to a garden of books.
Free for the picking.

***

On hot summer weekends,
We climbed the great, wide avenue of steps
To the old public library, us three –
Daddy, my sister and me.

Inside the cool, granite grey walls
Were too many books – how could we choose?
I loved The Black Stallion and Nancy Drew,
But almost anything would do.

I’d pick through the shelves,
Beginning with “A,”
Each trip moving down the letters,
Gathering a sack full of treasures.

At home I could read all day.
The books, like food, would feed me.
At breakfast and lunch time
Stories would fill my mind.

Sometimes my friend came by
She with her own book,
And we’d sit under a shady tree,
Each in our own reverie.

I’d get in trouble for reading too much.
My mother, who once loved dolls, not books,
Would say, “Do your chores,”
“Go out and play,” or “Sweep the floors.”

I’d grudgingly go and do what I was told,
With a lingering look, tearing myself away,
Knowing a whole other world
Lay waiting in pages to be unfurled.

Linda Austin
“Cherry Blossoms in Twilight”
http://www.moonbridgebooks.com