Charlie Poem by Martha J. Eshelman

Childhood ended with Mother's decree
we no longer play together
for reasons
obscure
to our barely adolescent minds used
to sliding down chopped clover
in the hay mow.
Sent after the cow
for evening milking,
we loped along the soft dust cow paths,
past our task, to the bar
to rearrange the mussels
nature carelessly strewed
along the river rock.
Amid alfalfa bales
we sought field mice
for our carefully constructed cage;
one, brave enough not to die
in our hands, died in birth
her offspring too small
for our eyedropper feedings.
But now
as Mother decreed
we are grown. You
move irrigation pipes over empty cow paths,
I bake bread for hungry baling crews, and
nature rearranges the mussels
to her pattern.