My Childhood Self

My childhood self would squat to peer under rocks and stones,

At slugs and worms writhing as one, a spaghetti mess in the mud;

Unable to resist poking their soft, sticky squishiness

With a stubby finger.

Would marvel at tremellose frogspawn.

Each morning, racing toward the pond,

Awaiting the emergence of wriggling tadpoles from their jelly prisons,

To witness the wonder of their metamorphosis.

I wondered if it hurt;

All that growing of limbs and shedding of tail;

If such transformation was a painful process, or a joyful enlightenment.

I could watch for hours as a spider spun her web;

Effortlessly weaving such delicate patterns

In the corner of my window frame,

Each silken, elastic thread sparkling with morning diamonds.

Then later: trapping, binding, feasting upon the mummified insect she had snared.

And resolutely, her lacy web destroyed, she would simply start again.

I thought the trees had died one winter,

Cried as their leaves rotted and fell,

Until my father told me that nature was complicit:

Boughs safe from the winter gales without their emerald sails,

Spring bulbs protected by the blanket of golden leaf litter,

The ancient oak, strengthening it's inner resolve through the frozen months.

I remember my childhood self:

How small I felt beneath the mountains;

How the ocean could awe, inspire and terrify me in equal measure;

How both the beauty and cruelty of the world could bring me to tears, steal my words.

I remember my childhood self.

She is still here.