As a barely-blooming girl of twelve, With freckles and brown straight chin-length hair, I sat by the pond in my grandparents’ Camelot And wished that I could talk to animals. “You can come to me,” I would have said, “I won’t hurt you. I only want to love you.” And, I believed, if the animals could only understand, The small yellow-black birds would sit on my shoulders, The lean-eyed bobcats would lie at my feet, And the fat bull-frog tadpoles would swim to the surface Just to hear me sing. Now, fourteen years later, I walk through the tall grass with a kitten on my shoulder. A lean-bellied black dog follows at my feet, And a long white cat surfaces briefly from the brush When I call her name. I talk to these animals- and they understand me. And I realize that I got my wish. Of all the selves I have been, I think she would have been happiest with who I have become. Somehow my hair has slipped back into her style. I don’t think the cosmopolitan me would be pleased with my choices. The...
