Guest Author

Donna Baier Stein - Poetry

The Yellow Brick Road

The Yellow Brick Road

has an end I hadn't
noticed before now.
I’ve worn out so many pairs
of shoes, some red, some stained
with juice in the shape of an unknown continent.
Travelling always from home
to what, at the time, looked like elsewhere.

Skipping back and forth--
peering into the refrigerator of a Midwestern childhood,
searching for hugs, or scavenging the secrets
behind green velvet drapes.
What would I have done without the longest love of all,
or my beloved dog at my side?

I would say this year is a milestone
but which one isn't? Which day less
illusion-filled than any other?
No wonder the road was the color of fear.
It's what kept me going for such a long time.
Hoping, always hoping, the next wizard
would be real, the screaming monkey mind would grow silent.

The yellow brick only seems to go from here to there.
Once you’ve travelled it enough times you know
even the road is as fake as the Great Oz himself.
Providing only the image of motion.
The road really does stop here.

I spin in dizzy, glorious circles,
the blue-and-white checked skirt
swirling around my knees in a wider and wider
flurry, making its presence felt in the only world
the road led to.

Imagine one brick, bounded on all sides.
Large enough for two dazzling red shoes to land on.
Then, dance as though your life depended on it
because it does.

Imagine circles not lines.
Violets blooming impossibly high
around you.

Imagine fear turning into sunshine
and concealing green drapes melting into a heap.
The witch, the broomstick, the lion, the scarecrow, the tin man
all characters in a play, even the dog in the basket.
Auntie Em only standing in for love waiting for you at home.
Picture the garden. The mountain. The guards.
All of it a global dream.
What if we knew it was one dream we all shared?
What if we finally woke up?
Imagine no distance between here and there.
The moment of the big bang, your life no bigger
or less important than that.

 

 

 

 

 

Donna Baier Stein

Copyright 2013

 

 

donna@donnabaierstein.com

 

 

This poem originally appeared in Spring 2012 Soundings East.
Donna Baier Stein's writing has appeared in New York Quarterly, Virginia Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner and many other journals and anthologies She has received a Fellowship from Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars, a Scholarship from Bread Loaf Writers Conference, the PEN/New England Discovery Award, Finalist in Iowa Fiction Awards, Honorable Mention in Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards, two Pushcart nominations, a New Jersey Council for the Arts grant, awards from the Poetry Societies of Virginia and New Hampshire, and more. Her chapbook Sometimes You Sense the Difference was published by Finishing Line Press. Her story collection Sympathetic People will be published in 2013 by Serving House Books. She was a Founding Poetry Editor of Bellevue Literary Review and is Founder and Publisher of TIFERET Journal. 

www.donnabaierstein.com