Sheryl Rising

A girl child is mysterious as a stone or a five-pointed star-- she is all dancing light, she is untiring flame, going all day on grasshopper energy, curled up at night like a stone in the field. Morning opens: she's on the horizon. ''Six o'clock, Mother--may I get up?'' Six on the dial, that magical number like noon or midnight, an arrow pointing. Somewhere inside's an invisible key cunningly fashioned, like an ear's curve, that every morning an angel winds. Off she whirrs, poised on the moment like a hummer on air-- the day is her nectar. A girl child is mysterious as a star or a five-pointed stone, a mini-Adam or Eve in the garden, discovering, discerning, weighing the world on the blue balanced scales of her eyes. She pokes fingers in secrets, picks knowledge without evil, spitting out cherry pits in summer, biting into fall apples, making snow-ice in winter with cream and vanilla, finding early in March the down-haired hepaticas, scooping brown leaves from the spring-- slippery as wet leather gloves-- to feel the pulse of the spring rise out of the sand. In mornings of mist when the mountain moves two miles away, and the old barn strays across the pasture, her sun-ray eyes throw back the curtain. She is rising-- the sky clears, her light flames from each grass-top. She is the bright five-pointed star.