Time Turning

Before I tasted Plath
and before Anne Sexton made forty
look like the perfect age,
there were fairies.

They hid in the grasses
and wove flowers in my hair
with their tiny wicked finger.
They pulled down clouds from the sky.

There was magic in music.
Lyrics, iridescent bubbles of thought,
forced air into my lungs
and my vision transmuted to color.

Do you remember the fairies?
They crowned me their queen.
You knelt, green, at my feet,
and I, flushed pink, kissed your brow.

Before rain streaked the horizon,
melting the snow drops,
sparklers arrived, lit and lustrous,
in the mailbox.

They turned to jewels,
dropped in my ribs' repository.
I never see them anymore.
I don't care to, but they changed me.

Returning to the fairies, however-
I can't forget the scent, then.
It trips me on a lonely sidewalk
and teases in crowded passageways.