A Child's World, Marian Walsh

The sky is her roof, cupped over the level land
Around her house, orchards stand in rows
And she walks through the aisles
Of orderly trees, feeling safe and peaceful
No sense of hidden danger
As, in tangled woods behind the farm
She looks for the three bears

Down the road stands a white church
Where she sits with other children and listens to bible stories
Told by a woman in a pink dress,
Whose pink cheeks dimple when she smiles
She always smiles even when she says Jezebel
Was thrown out of a window and eaten by dogs.
They always sing “Jesus loves me, this I know.”
The child does not know what this means:
Who is Jesus? She has never met him.
But she fears Jehovah.

Upstairs in the church are aisles between hard, polished pews:
A quiet place, like the orchards, but not alive, like them.

The farm is her paradise,
One day she finds a locust, half buried in the sandy lane:
Lacy wings splayed and brittle,
Wings that sang with piercing joy at noon
And she is sad.