Blue, Green, Red and Purple: In The Park
Betty Collins’s poem expresses a deep, deep longing to be young again.
I want to fling myself down in the long grass in the shade of that tree
And sleep
As once I did by the side of Lake Burley-Griffin in Canberra
Long ago
Or I want to roll in that grass, laughing, wriggling out from under you.
Or lie on my back with my straw hat over my face
Circles and lashes of tetrahedron sunlight
Prism split and shattering into a million dreams.
I want to look out from under that tree at the wide blue ocean, the pale sky
The sun coming up and the moon going down
I don’t want to sit here on this hard slatted bench
Where my bones shudder against the effort of moving
And the children do not notice the old gray motionless figure,
Silent,
But not asleep yet
Against the powdery gray paint of the bench.
