Daisies on the Fields of France, a poem

Daisies on the Fields of France

 

By Rebecca T. Dickinson

 

I stand at the kitchen door

with light lemon hair

curling

at my shoulders.

Untucked, gray shirt  

as eyes stare at

another plain

in my mind

that no soul-stained

teacher wants

to see or hear again.

Meet me in the

here and now,

I can hear you say.

Ever after,

What is that?

Some man’s lie

for little girls

to grow up with

a sunflower

kind of hope.

The daisies grow on

the fields of France,

but the mines;

barbed wire

still dwell

in the dirt.

“I will not be the same

as I was before,” I say.

You drop your head.

You walk out the door.

Marriage is not

dreams and dazzles,

sparkles and white

on some wedding day.

You can live in the

fifteen second dream

of a ceremony.

Blow the money.

Watch it fly.

Almost,

ten years,

it’s been,

and I need you before me.

Oh, I love you,

I wish I could say it better,

I wish I could show it more.

When I see you drop your

Head and walk away,

I run out outside

to your blue gray truck.

“I feel like you’re giving up,”

you say.

“The person I am is still here,

but I will never be the same.

I must work through

the damage done.

It is the only way to heal.”

What we know:

Teaching is not meant

to work this way,

and it cost us more than

some wedding day.

The daisies grow again

on the fields of France.

Yellow is still my favorite color,

and June my favorite month.

June is when I met you

in a yellow, button shirt

with lemon light hair

curling

at my shoulders.

I need you now

as I saw you then

to ask me why men

date crazy women.

 

Read the introduction for the poem.