Time was I hopped, hurlyburly up on top of a giant banana leaf. All greeny and sheeny, I sailed it away from drudgery and its teeth . I wanted to fly but the water was high, splashing around in my boots at the shins. With barnacles clinging and catfish a-biting, their whiskers weighed me down to their fins. And so I floated as if in a dream from the mind of the blind Monet. Lily pads and deep dark water, bending my eyes to the pallet of play. Laying flat on the leaf and full of breathy relief, I paddled on with elbows and knees. Shiny with streams and rusty red dreams, algae slithering down to my toes and my tees. Oh, pimblypoot and nibblynoot, that banana leaf was strong! I didn’t poke through and I didn’t slip off, enchanted it was, like a song.  Slippery sssssnickery the river snaked over the land, carrying me along with it – a child nibbling at the bosom of the Mother, feeling free to eat that meal ticket. While fluttery butteries danced in the air, dipping between vines and pungent flowers, making the earthbound critters weep with envy, I blew wishes and threw kisses for hours. It was that loony spacoony with his albino mask raking at the base of the tree, not me! I was still floating, still nodding and noting, while the lily pads rose up to the knees of the trees. Those spunky little monkeys dancing on branches stopped to gurgle their hellos. “Suppose, I suppose,” they said, with their barely hairy heads, throwing peels at the black beaks of crows. Oh simbelly dimbelly their fingers were like knobbly machines! All grasping and tasking and hurling those bright tangerines. Then down in the water full of flotsam and fodder I spied a piranha below. HIs red eyes were glowing and his big teeth were showing me just where to go. Up came the limbs and out of the water, the Mother had lifted the veil from her daughter and onto dry land I did crawl. Hibbery jibbery I don’t like piranhas neither their eyes nor their teeth, not at all! Wringing out my hair while the loony spacoonies stared, my feet found a white sandy path. I trundled along as if I belonged, feeling in need of a bath. The path climbing higher and beginning to tire, I stumbled clear of the trees. The stars were delicious, the clouds were pernicious, exposed as I was on the ground. Oh bataback and rapanack, fee fi fo tawack, how could this… why should this be? Twenty stones throws away, and back in time for a day, a kitten was calling to me. Welcome home, you rogue, you ramble, you bramble! Welcome home, though you left me for dead. Coming back now, you mad cow, you sad sow? Do you expect me to stand on my head? Oh sputtery muttery the cat had the cutlery and I had my hat in my hand. That river, that leaf, ran me in circles, oh boots I know where I stand.

© Tina Zabielski 2011-2019