Wendy’s Regret

Poetry

No matter how often she looked at the London skyscape,

Wendy could not find the star that had once led home —

yes, home, because that’s what it had been —

where mermaids had swatted their tails at her,

pirates had skulked through wild terrain,

and Lost Boys had howled at the moon.

*

But what she remembered most was not flight,

or the taste of wild berries at her lips,

or even Peter’s hand in hers.

No, what Wendy recalled was the hush of fairies

as their glowing bodies floated through air

and how they burst into being so easily,

called into life by babies’ laughs so far away.

8

As she grew up, she wondered about so many things —

Hook and the crocodile,

the brood of motherless boys,

even stalwart Tigerlily and her tribe.

But Neverland was just a phase for her

(though she had wanted it to be her life)

while she passed from child to maid to wife.