In the patchwork grass

On the side of my yard

Fairies grow from the ground.

White-headed and infantile,

Sleepy-eyed and incomplete.

I pluck their stems and fashion them

Like crafting humans from clay,

Tying their soft pale bodies

To pliable grass blades

That resemble arms and legs.

They stretch, with their fragile new limbs,

Green and starched, as they yawn out

Of chalky dirt.  They have naked wings

Invisible and secret, and veiny like hands.  They flap

Like thought, changing hue like a mood ring.  Fairies are

Earth-colored and sun-lit, frothy as air; they are as alien

As I am, as whimsy-bound as our dandelion brains.

The solid oaks are there to anchor us, their towering bark

Scratched with age and wind.  But the fairies want

To know me, this clumsy cunning creature

Who shares their image, so flimsy and small.

They are fluttering and divine, and surer

Than robins or thrushes.  They spring

From the soil’s bosom with a primordial knowledge, floating

In space and white sky. 

They follow me, clutched in my fist

As their new legs swing

Worshiping the wind as something greater

Than creation, boundless and tender and forever.

I roll their waists in my fingertips, warming them

For the takeoff they so miss.  Some lucky fuzz shakes free

Off their heads, children prematurely dancing

And exalting in the short freedom they are owed.

My brow is thoughtful, waiting for my wish.

That’s a fairy’s promise: its guarantee.  Free it

From its earthy cage, and give it proper form;

It will scatter its magic onto the world,

With your thoughts enveloped, and your breath

A postage stamp.  My lips pucker, and my eyes close

Tight.  I do not open them until after the fairy’s brood

Is twirling free.  Once you look behind the curtain,

Your wishes can no longer come true.

My desire drifts and spirals in feather-seeds   

Singing through the air, wisps that are heavy

With things you can’t know how to say:

Things that children wish

And grown-ups must forget.  The white sprouts swirl

In an eggshell sky, on wind and not wings.

Their mother gazes at them, sitting in my palm

As she waits to return to the solid ground

She has grown so attached to.

Bare-headed and assured, she soars

Back to the earth that shares her color. 

I glance back, to see her land

Where I tossed her, on soft and scratchy dirt.  She sits

Up, steady, her head now as weightless

As her children, her mind free and grounded

Enough to grasp

The bigness of bark, the odor

Of orange leaves, and the dew

That dots the grass like paint.  She is wiser and

Luckier than me; she thinks that real is magic.         

I can wait for the fairy’s offspring, until they’re ready

To reunite with their fuzz-stalked brethren

That they look nothing like.  Someday they will burrow

Into the paper of dirt, and stretch, so their seeds can see

My eyes, that are blue and big and far away like stars. 

But for right now, their destiny, to be tossed and shorn

In the funeral heap of their ancestors

Is even farther away than an earth-bound child

That needs their flying and falling to be real.