Marcia Cole
“Lilac Sky “
Response

Dark Pinecones
By Becca Biggs
Inspiration piece

When I was young,

I thought I would be famous.

Yet it wasn’t something

I worked at, like scaling a mountain

lifting and slamming one ice pick after another.

Somehow I thought fame

would arrive like an elegant gift

with an enormous ivory satin ribbon,

without even an occasion to mark.

Now I take stock and wish only

to avoid being mediocre.

Unlike the hand holds up the mountain,

this level task has little grandeur or drama,

just the sober work of noting

one’s own humming song.

My ear tips upward

to the lone bird atop the highest branch,

the ivory ribbon,

the odd yellow light in a rain tossed afternoon

hinting of eternity,

the sturdy box,

And my thoughts that fall on the page,

like the dark pinecones

I saw in the thick green moss,

my only gift.

Once as a child

my friend’s much older married sister asked,

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

without hesitation, I said, “a poet.”

That Michigan farmhouse went still.

And, I thought, “this must not be a real answer”

never to utter it aloud again,

not knowing I was taking,

my first tiny steps towards my own mediocrity.

Now, with a vista, I retrace and carve a new arch

mapping the way with the points of my compass,

Lone bird, yellow light, thick moss, dark pinecones.

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