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Homemade of Words (ghazal)

By day we ran barefoot. By night we bathed in her cascade of words
Pinocchio, Little Boy Blue, and all that wild parade of words

The room with the wandering beds where we were little girls on boats
At bedtime floated away into a fairy place made of words

Oh they felt guilty they’d taken us from the land of milk and Kellogg’s
So they tied us to home with their endless golden braid of words

Daddy read Bibles, biographies, Newsweek, and sometimes Le Monde
But Mommy read mysteries, novels, poetry, in every last shade of words

Of sewing and cookery, cleaning and wifery my mother taught me nothing
We traveled a sparkling world behind our enchanted blockade of words

Our homeschool had number cards, sundials, paper-bag horseheads
But the fabric of delight was sung, recited, and prayed with words

She opened her golden throat and crooned us a universe of witchery
Her free-range children built of song and stoutly homemade of words
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