Covered Wagon

I drag my pink and white block crochet blanket down the hall.
The goal, the back yard, where my covered wagon was waiting.
The fun of playing pretend, is that anything can become anything.
Today, the picnic table is to be my covered wagon.

I skip over to the wagon, feeling the cool grass on my bare feet.
My red flowered bonnet hanging around my neck and my braids swinging back and forth.
I drape the blanket over the last part of what is to be my wagon, having covered it with other blankets.
Pooh bear and Mary doll are already under the table, waiting for our adventure to begin.

With my bonnet on, I would wander the backyard, picking wheat to make bread.
I would gather those weeds that looked like wheat and then rub the tops between my hands.
The seeds falling onto a large step brick, for me to grind them down with a rock.
Just like the Indians did, never enough to make anything, after all it was just pretend.

I pick strawberries from the garden, pretending I found a wild berry patch.
I pick the black elderberries and squish them to make pretend wine, to sour to eat.
I lay under that picnic table reading books, to Pooh and Mary.
All the while, pretending, to be in a rocking covered wagon.

Sometimes, my little sister would join me, in my adventures of wandering the prairie plains.
I would be Laura and she would be Mary, because of her blond hair and her blue flowered bonnet.
We would start in the morning and play into the late afternoon.
Mom would bring us lunch on paper plates, pretending to be lunch buckets taken to school.

At some point, that covered wagon was replaced.
A blanket under the tree, with a book in hand.
I would spend the day reading classics.
The soft breezes of summer, carrying me away.

By M. Bernstein

(Both poem and photo first published in The Sandhill Review: Art & Literary Magazine, Fall 2023, by Adams State University.)