a birthday poem

[bronze_ribbons]

Dear bitterfig, I am late in the day, but this is for you. May your 37th year bring you better health and bright joys.



If I owned the wind and the trees, I would
command for you an alchemy
that transformed every third thing you touched from now on
not into gold but strength,
be it freezing rain
or the sting of anger
or the sticky cling of illness
or the everyday grit of surviving.
It would not be every thing, for I
would not deprive you of surprises -- the doll
or coin inside a cake, or the wayward
whiff of stolen moments
scenting the underside of a petal.

I have been in a realm like yours. I wear
the scars of having been cast into a well
for being neither fair nor porcelain pure.
And when I crawled out, there was neither tiara
nor trophy nor welcome from the crowd
for being around to haunt their next ball.

I have been the guilty grasshopper
feasting with the ants, their generosity
sour on my tongue but warm in my belly,
and I have been the too-small slipper,
useless for everyday wear, but
the key to the truth of a footprint.

I have longed to be a wickedly good
wicked godmother -- one who could give you
the slippers and wings to leap across lakes
to some hospitable land, one where milk and honey
are more than metaphors or commodities. But
I own neither magic nor mirrors, so all I bring
to your day are these wishes: may you see
in every candle and lamp reminders of
the perseverance and necessity of fire,
regardless of whether it's housed in a husk
or a homely plastic hull, or the most
heavenly swathe of silk, and may you believe
that a fire kindled from so-called junk
can burn as fierce and hot as any
built on a pyre of what the world calls treasure.

~ Ribbons