Less crabby, but still unsociable ;-)

Green Fortress

by Moni


If there's one thing I love dearly
It's a hidey hole.
Symbolically impenetrable and private.
I can't see you, or maybe I can and I'm spying
But either way, you can't see me.

The highest incarnation of hidey hole
Is under God's great sky
Not plaster, dry wall, or acoustic tile.

A fortress with ants, and birds, and air circulation.
Preferably breathing green walls.
Carpeted with honest, friendly, life-holding filth.

My cherished childhood hole was a long, narrow vestibule.
With a back wall of light blocking, vine-permeated fence
And a front wall of spade shaped leaves and spindly trunks.
The jacket-snatching ceiling began where the leaves began.

More of a crouching hole than a standing hole.
Years of leaf litter on the soft, roly-poly infested floors.
The upstairs neighbors squabbling and gossiping
About kids, and nests, and worm scarcity.

And around Memorial Day, a smiling, teary, enveloping fragrance
Of lavender and white, and memories
And love from the earth and unseen beings.
Loneliness absent in my lilac home.