Swaddled in Saturday Afternoon

Friday afternoon in early spring
was all but Saturday, and finer in its
way — a long, warm wallowing in
fresh anticipation — no activity
at all, allowing for the effortless,
habitual mobility of youth,
and I had energetic fantasies,
pie in the sky, like every other foolish
girl — I’m certain it’s a rule or ought to
be — uncensored dreams, I mean. How pliable
the world and I were then, how agile my
imagination, deftly crafting Saturday
scenarios and shaping situations on a whim.












turned to hard-
packed trails across Nebraska Territory,
I was guiding covered wagons westward,
though unhappily my little pony, Daisy,
had been left behind in Council Bluffs,
recuperating from... from... um... the
hiccups; such a mystifying case,
so strange.

The wind changed. Balmy just a tick ago,
the day turned strangely dark, and
cold, quick puffs of what remained of
winter merged into a gale. I loosed my
braided hair and let the wind do what it
would. I knew (the wind did not), no
matter how it tugged and turned, no
ordinary wind could separate my hair
and skin — a small but gratifying
evidence of power, to tease the elements
that way, and win. And with such grand,
decisive triumphs, Saturdays begin.
Unfamiliar Territory:
Poems, Prayers,
Songs, Vol. 1, by
Mary Campbell
The Ancients, Part 1:
Daddy Pete
A fable about
fatherhood, by Mary
Campbell
There was a wild and wooded place, if
only ten feet wide or so, that circumscribed
the park. Good climbing trees were there, and
shrubs to hide in while you waited for
Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp to ride in
from their day of keeping lawlessness
at bay. I must be canny and adjust
my brim, so it just skims my eyes. Oh! Here they
come! Oh! It isn’t they, not then! It’s Robin
and his Merry Men, and I, Maid Marian,
again defied the wind and pinned my tousled
hair into a prim, aristocratic
bun, with tendrils tumbling ‘round my face.

The wind abated and the sun peeked out.
I leaned against the Gallaghers’ red maple tree
    and watched the play of shade and
    shimmer in
    the variegated canopy and felt
    the muffled thrum that was the rhythm of
    a Saturday in spring, the quieting
    of afternoon in placid neighborhoods.
    I heard my mother mixing commerce with
    a bit of gossip as the Alamito
    Dairy man, whose name was John, sold
    butter,
    half-and-half, and cottage cheese, and
    muttered
something he had gleaned from Mrs. Hahn,
about the Beasleys’ sheltie’s puppies being
weaned, as I recall. I listened to the
uninflected tune of bees around
a clump of lilacs, heard a small child’s bleating
and her mama crooning consolation,
and a screen door with a wicked spring
obedient to physics, snapping like a
shot, too raucous for the soporific
interlude. And why not let myself
be swaddled by the sun, the homely
sounds, the scent of sod just laid, and lilies
of the valley emanating fragrance
disproportionate to their small,
delicate, half-hidden habitat?
Well contented was I then to call
an end to my adventures for a time;
for there were lemonade, and crackers, and
a book to carry to the back yard and my
secret nook between the privet and the
elm, concave as if it had been made
expressly for my shoulder blades.
In my fringed suede
jacket with my long,
brown hair in braids that
swished across
my back, I could be Jo
March or Annie
Oakley just by wishing to.
A lengthening
of stride on pleasant
residential
sidewalks, in an instant
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