Field Notes
The Yellow Box — A Poem
If you look inside
My yellow box.
Dreams fly away
My history is
Without weight
Without purpose.
My childhood fluttered away
When kind Madam gave me the
Yellow Box.
It took my joy
Some time passed
Before I turned the earth one day in Gulele.
And then, I understood and left that place.
I put my mother, a little dolly Mommie
In The Yellow Box,
Placed so very gently
A a small cardboard bed.
With a bright red cover
to keep her
Warm, from cool Addis nights
And one boy I met in
Shiromeda
Shared his picture.
Mary and Jesus
Smiling from clouds and flowers
Floating
In a big green valley.
I placed them in a stick frame
Made from twigs given
by the firewood carrier ladies
Who signed at me on the dusty road.
And then I drew an ice cream cone
and put it inside
The Yellow Box.
Near the cardboard bed,
a tiny sweet to feed her always.
And far away from The Virus.
I placed a small wooden cross
Across Mommy’s Chest.
I made it from loom ladies’
string and wood chips.
And added one angel
to feed my Mom,
And fly her to the moon
and Sun.
Far away
From The Yellow Box.
–By Sheree