Yesterday morning was our annual backyard Easter Egg Hunt – a very popular event among our friends, family, and neighbors. Children ages 9 months to 20 years joined the search for hundreds of plastic eggs filled with chocolate candies. For the adults, there were two specially hidden eggs: gold and silver. Only the following poems gave clues to their locations:
Silver Egg
(buried in the dirt under a stepping stone of the steps up the riverbank)
The stone above me keeps me in the dark.
I would glow like moonlight if I could be
found. But long you’ll search in vain to find me,
because no single quality in your
thub-thubbing heart will guide you to my home:
a canine drive to find me in the ground;
a gardener’s love of dirt; you can possess
no loathing of Jerusalem Crickets’
shy heads; you must be brave to stoop to find
me here. Small hunters may contain within
themselves advantage for they are quite close
to where I make my hidey-home. But look—
you’ll find me if you search closely and dare,
to seek by bark if you would find my lair.
Gold Egg
(tied to a young palm tree frond about ten feet above the ground)
Surrounding me is evidence of past
strong growth, for when my home came here it was
a child, with slender fronds and coiled roots.
But now! My home is tall and casts a shade
quite deeply on the stones beneath my feet.
They do not reach the kennel or the bank
for my tall perch is not yet fully grown.
A teenager provides me with both shade
and shelter from the never-ending drought.
My home is safe from desiccating years
for she was bred from stock that has survived
millennia on California’s dry shores.
Desiree and Dan found the Gold and Silver eggs eventually. eleaThanks to the Associate Easter Bunny, my daughter Jessica for the poems (composed in Washington State), and thanks to Paul and John for helping create the festivities! I love watching the children finding eggs in the garden to fill their baskets, then re-hiding eggs for each other after most of the eggs have been collected. A delightful celebration of new life and renewal!
Images Copyright 2015 by Katy Dickinson
