With a line from Hyacinthe Hill
We are the girls who are the princesses.
We will not change our hiking boots
or boat shoes or red heels for your benefit
Unless it suits

Rather we will invite you to meet our family
experience our hospitality, take note of our skills.
We will not outwardly be beguiled by your beauty.
Unless it suits

We will secretly rejoice
(if you are moved by ours.)
We admire peepers, the pond, the bull frogs
in all their colored splendor
brown, gray, olive, yellow, rufous
and all their variegations

It would not be enough
that you are beautiful to us.
You must possess or acquire skills
Enough to rule a kingdom along side of us,
not us.

Men have forgotten to relax.

They are plugged in, eyes engaged,
moving from one screen to another.
Rarely stopping to
see the duckweed, hear the heron,
feel the pine needles beneath their soles.

We prefer to row by the lake,
looking for the Great Stellaluna’s
leavings in the night:
a delicate web, a firefly
a platter size moon flower
a new clutch of painted turtles
making their way to the family log.

The screens keep us from seeing shooting stars
fireflies, the Northern Lights.
We are distracted by the glare,
the way it illuminates their faces.

We admire the frogs and their smooth entries
loud song, great leaps.
These are magic.

Magic that makes us throw our golden balls
where we may,
and look for the prince
that wants to have a game of catch.

Yes, that suits.

LINDA TROTT DICKMAN is an award winning poet, author of four chapbooks and a poetry prompt book for children of all ages.  Her work has been anthologized locally and internationally.   She is the coordinator of poetry for the Northport Arts Coalition. Linda works with poets of all ages, at the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association, local museums, and leads a poetry workshop at Samantha’s Li’l Bit O’ Heaven coffee house. Linda is a Suffolk County Woman of Distinction for the year 2023. She makes a linguine and clam sauce recipe that is as old as she is.  She loves singing in her church choir. She is a punster.