Twelve Children Poem by Pat Kelbaugh

Twelve Children



JANUARY'S CHILD
She's nobody's favorite.
In a jewel box full of diamonds, emeralds, rubies, pearls and faceted amber,
she's the moonstone.

January's Child opens the jewel box and takes out the moonstones.
She holds the necklace to her throat,
brings the strand together at the back of her neck and fastens it.
There are two single round stones,
rounder than pearls,
set in silver.
The silver goes through piercings, and the moonstones listen.
She is ready.

She is tired of being the first to appear and the last to know about the year.
April's Child has a place in the village of Almanac-On-Vellum -
She's an Aries and given to exaggeration; even so, she claims to be a fortune teller.
If she will accept moonstones as payment, January's Child will learn about the new year.

Outside, the sky is cloudless.
The sun is placed at noon.
The watery blue sunlight makes the sky look like the inside of a moonstone.
A good omen, she thinks, perhaps.

There is April's place, in the square.
No one is home.
There is a sign in the window.
It says, "See you in the spring."

You don't need a seer to know it is getting cold.
Riderless horses in the sky are signaling snow.
January's Child,
keep your moonstones.
Go home.
Sometimes, it's better not to know.

FEBRUARY'S CHILD
She looks through thick eyelashes
that cast long shadows.
Those, she will always have.
But she is jaded and tired now,
and wears sensible shoes.

Like an aging beauty
who awakens one day to find
it's all faded and gone,
she often dresses in white.
Despairing for her vanished gift,
she ceases her struggle with Fate
and embraces it.

MARCH'S CHILD
She enters with a spirit like a sorrowed moonscape.
Friends come to her unaware, complaining of their own malaise,
since she is a child of Nature.
She has very little left to give, but she blusters,
and they call her a Lion.

Is it possible to hear a bright star?
She is alone with them tonight,
all the stars in her night sky.
There is no sky colder than hers.
There is no night more hopeless.
Finally, she sleeps.

In a world of long ago time,
she was as beautiful as May.
She is again,
roaming the corridors of her youth,
and opening doors.
Those within
do not complain,
do not demand.
They fill the empty space within her.

Time travels in a circle.
Renewal, always a part of it.
Just as the bright stars,
in a cold sky,
shouting.

APRIL'S CHILD
Old dude,
don't say to me, 'Youth is wasted on the young.'
Say it to the other old dudes over dinner at a fine restaurant,
as you're straining your old dude brain
trying to figure out
an eighteen percent tip.

Old babe,
don't say to me, 'Youth is wasted on the young.'
Say it to your old babe friends as you yak on your phone in your fine car,
driving home from the mall to your active adult condo,
with hardwood floors
and crown molding.

Even back when you were young, for many,
youth was wasted on survival.
It still is.
Survival that comes packaged in a box,
a box marked JOB.

Once the box is opened, the contents begin to vanish:
Days, then weeks, and then years,
divided at intervals by paychecks.
The paychecks vanish more quickly than anything else.
Touch one, and it disappears.

Do you remember what happens next?

You are thinking that YOU are inside the box.
And you are.
And you are no longer young.

Did you know April's Child?
She is careless, carefree, capricious,
and she does not speak the language
of old dudes and old babes.
She's never learned it.

Even if the windows in the box will not open,
there is no doubt she's here again,
from the quality of the light that she offers to anyone who will notice it,
the energy of things newly reborn,
the mystery of things never to be understood,
and her absolute indifference
to whether or not we see her, hear her, heed her.

The choice is ours.
We can stay in the box with its corridors like gray ant tunnels.
We can stay in the box with its tattered magazines in the bathrooms, dated last winter.
We can stay in the box with its broken people and their hollow values.
We can stay in the box until there is no longer any bittersweet, only bitter.

Or not.

MAY'S CHILD
Dressed all in pastels,
she steps onto the stage and
sings an aria.

Sensible people, beware. Stay indoors and keep your windows closed.
Do not breathe the air out there.
Sensible people, being sensible will not save you,
this May night.

With the dawn her words
fade away with the stars, but
her music remains.

May's Child is barefoot.
The grass under her feet is always soft and warm.
She smiles a smile as warm as the grass she walks upon,
holds out her hand and says:
Come walk with me, but first
take off your sensible shoes.

Don't worry, do it.
Trust her, for she is a child
of the Good Mother.

Look for a cloud.
There are none left in the sky.
All of them have fallen
to cover the trees in flowers
and baby leaves.

Touch them.

JUNE'S CHILD

She's the answer to a prayer that you didn't know you said.
She's the smell of rose perfume drifting sweet across your bed.
She's the company of stars if you find yourself alone.
In the coolest pink of morning, see? She isn't really gone…

I awaken,
to silence. Everyone is still sleeping:

No kids to feed, no dog to walk.
Four-thirty, only, on the clock.
To flee, I've just to close my eyes,
again, and compartmentalize.

And drift… by the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea…
Listen. You can hear the surf:
whooshhhh… two, three, four, pause.
whooshhhh…

Why do I keep coming back here?
The place could use a paint job.
This 1940s era, wooden motel, sprawling, right up on the beach.
The locks on the doors are flimsy and the room layouts don't make sense,
but I paid my money in the Office and got my room,
just like last time.
I know there are people around, although I never see anyone.
I like that.

"Please relax, " whispers June's Child, "and enjoy your little vacation."
She's wearing shades of green: celery and cedar,
grass and juniper. She blends so well
with the early morning shadows that I can't see her,
but I can hear her clearly.
"Come with me, to the garden, " she says. "Someone wants to see you."

Tiny petals float in the air like sand from the Sandman's hand.
There are wild beach rose bushes towering six feet high,
covered with pink and white blossoms.
In them, fuzzy bumblebees are tumbling about
like happy toddlers.

And then, I recognize my Someone!

Gentle One! Where have you been?
How long since I've last seen you?
Those eyes, with their familiar light!
You know I didn't mean to forget you since you went away.
How welcome, your sweet stare!
Lost loves come back unbidden
on the velvet summer air.

Too soon, I awaken,
to the alarm, beeping.
Reality tasers me out of bed:

Feed the dog, walk the kids.
Go on-line for insurance bids.
Dress for work, wipe up drool.
Get the children off to school.
Find my bag, fish for keys,
Smell the roses on the breeze, and

Stop.

How pathetic.
Can it really be true?
Does the only magic in my ordinary life
reside at the Dream Motel-Sur-Mer?

Then, I hear her whisper,
"No."
And I understand.

June's Child is still here,
Dressed in green, in my garden.
Smelling of roses.

JULY'S CHILD
A hot wind blows flags
next to doors of strip mall stores.
"OPEN" say the flags.

Somewhere, at the seashore,
tiny children in little sun hats
are seeing the ocean
for the first time.

Moms read novels in umbrellas' shade,
looking up every paragraph or two
to check on the progress
of sand castles.

Orange lilies burst
from green gardens. The flowers
bloom one day, then die.

Somewhere, in the country,
baby animals with silky fur
are seeing summer
for the first time.

Mommas munch soft grass under old shade trees,
looking up every mouthful or two
to watch as their babies
frolic.

July's Child, disguised
as a Luna moth, pale green.
Come and look at her.

I had never seen a Luna moth, except in pictures.
They are not exactly rare,
but once the caterpillars turn into moths,
they only live for one week.
Today there was one at lunchtime
on the side of the pizza house in the strip mall.
Clinging to the bricks.

I called the women who work in the pizza house
outside,
to look.
They said,
"Oh."

Oh, summer. You are
so short. Beautiful, then gone.
Like a Luna moth.

AUGUST'S CHILD
In the sky, the trees,
the ocean breeze. All around,
the signs of summer.

The signs say, "Under New Management".

Before, sameness.
Every day just like the last -
hot days, humid nights, cool mornings.

Now, sheets of rain.
Low, swirling clouds,
thunder to shake the earth.
Then, heat lightening for hours.
Silent, colorless fireworks.

Cool breeze.
Dripping wet trees.

Afterwards the air is crystal.
A huge half moon, an inky horizon.
The sky, lit up luminous
by that big electric cheese.

Still again.
Hot again.

Stars peeking through a
changing, filmy, misty sky
at summer's wild child.

SEPTEMBER'S CHILD
Something wonderful
about the way the wind from the ocean feels on my skin
is making me move gracefully,
as if I were a dancer.

I am walking high up on the seawall,
going to meet September's Child.

Her beauty is legendary.
Every year, she has many suitors.
They are famous. Some are dangerous.
Everyone knows their names.
They are pursued by paparazzi
from the Weather Channel.

One by one, she sends her suitors away.
The latest one is leaving now, see?
Off in the distance - looking so much older,
a bald sky with a thin fringe of clouds around the horizon.
Rejected, wailing upon the wind.
Not you, either.

The wind is coming to meet September's Child.
It wants to shout sweet secrets into her ear.

Winds that won't be tamed,
sing to us. Make us hear them,
the ancient voices.

People are walking by, hand in hand,
perfumed.
They should be silent unless they whisper soft love.
But they're not.
They speak of vegetables
and fourth grade children.

Legions of waves are queued to land on the beach,
murky in their roiled camouflage.
Festoons of seaweed in a wedding cake pattern
decorate the tide line.
Newly finished sea glass glints in the sunlight
between smooth wet stones.

The waves, in and out,
pull on wide ribbons of smooth stones.
The clacking sound the stones make
sounds like applause.

Never will September's Child
accept any of her suitors. She is solitary,
complete in herself.
Alone, like the lone sandal lying in the seaweed.
She will never choose to share this.

I don't want to leave.

OCTOBER'S CHILD
Run!
from the endless necessary, from the relentless negative.

Hide!
under the boardwalk.

Steal!
back an afternoon of my life.

Watch.
He's swimming, parallel with the long curve of the shore.
The seawater is crystal, still warm.
He's strong.
I can only see his back and arms, not his face.
Young? Old? I can't tell. I don't care.
I don't want to know.
Something about him soothes me.
Perhaps he is October's Child.

Summer's haze is gone.
Throw my head back; breathe deeply.
Air, cleaner than truth.

First, the air smells like tea.
Then, like salt.
Squint. Sunlight is fracturing off the ocean.
The shadows are long, but they feel soft.
Everything hard feels soft in the magical air.

Here he is, perfection, cloudless.

Look. Autumn leaves are
floating in his tidal pools.
Sun kissed. Kissed again.

Breathe.
Disappear into the warm blueness.

You can't see me.

NOVEMBER'S CHILD, A SELF PORTRAIT

Summer had left, and on her heels came autumn, all flaming color and cool, fresh breath. Summer had pleaded before departing, "Don't forget me! "
But at the first serious flirtation of autumn, everyone forgot.

Autumn's days were like summer's at first, but autumn was moody.
Tiring of summer's décor, she changed it.
Greens were out. Reds and yellows were in, and earth tones.
She backlit them with brilliant sunlight and cerulean skies.
Satisfied with the days, she turned to the nights.
Depending upon her mood, nights were cold and tinged with frost,
or moonlit, fresh with quickened breezes fragrant with wood smoke.
There was an interlude of pale blue and gold during early November.
It was as if autumn were hung over after her wild celebration of October color, and sleeping it off.

November's Child stood in the afterglow. Quiet, so quiet.
Strange eyes.
Brown hair being blown like the brown leaves from the trees on either side of her, branches (if you looked closely) that were made from outlines of the artist's hands.
There was water, blue lines of chill November, flowing over and through her shoulders, into a goblet, its stem alternating eleven gold and deep purple cabochons.
Pale skin, faded from summer's teak hue.
So young, only 20;
yet already needing to be renewed by standing almost naked in the last of the warm sun, only this one more afternoon.
Beyond the chill blue water, trees as naked as she was were holding on to the last of their pale gold, only until the next wind.
There were signs, in abstract shapes, in the trees, in the air, in the film of fabric partially covering her body, that symbolized Quiet.
Peace.
Power of Spirit, and Thanks-giving.
I am young, only this one more afternoon.
I am young forever, in this image.
I am November's Child.

DECEMBER'S CHILD
November's Child couldn't stay, dressed the way she was.
December's Child is coming.
You must listen carefully to hear her.
It is early and for now, she is quiet, too.

Some foolishly pine for Summer and go away south to look for her.
It is cold, they say, and there is no color in the land.
How can they not see it?
The sky is alive, tempestuous and smoky,
or china blue and rare
like her eyes.

The sky is bigger now.
The leaves have fallen from the trees,
brown onto the earth where they lie, quiet.
The earth is sleeping under them.
The spirit of the earth is filled with dreams:
Layers of leaves, layers of dreams, layers of years.
They are all there.

December's Child has dreams yet to live.
Like a new month in an old year,
she is young in an old world.

The sun is setting now.
In the sky there are layers of defined color, like a fancy cocktail.
The colors are clear, crystal pink and palest gold.
December's Child can feel the dusk that will follow upon it.
Outwardly, chill,
but inwardly, warm, and heavy with mystery.

She smiles.

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