Garden Poetry

My mind is longer than any tree's branch.
My arms are like the trunk of a tree.
My hair is a bush in the garden.
My room is a treehouse swaying in the treetops.
My feet are the roots on a tree.
My fingers are like bonsai, each its own.

~The Kid, February 2009

Translation of My Life

I remember the past.
Before there were poems.
I was eight. The world
simple as a primer.
I lived in a small town
far from the ocean.
Home, then school,
then home again,
back and forth
on my blue bicycle...
There are photographs,
yellow and crumbling,
to prove what I say.

...Understand, I was only a girl
living the days as they came.
I did not know then I would leave.
Though I had a secret
I did not tell and will not ever,
I did not know I would leave.

By Elizabeth Spires
abridged