Richibi’s Weblog

   “Alice in Wonderland“ (1977 )

          Salvador Dali

              _______

                        to Soeur Lucie-des-Lys,
                               wherever she now 
                                             may be

the school that we went to, my 
sister and I, was across the street, 
through a wild grass field, which 
we crossed diagonally, especially 
after the Soeurs de l’Assomption,
the Sisters of the Assumption of,
indeed, the Blessed Virgin, had
their convent built directly before
our house, not only the times, but 
also the nuns’ implicit intercession, 
would’ve prevented any harm 
coming to us as we wended our
innocent way across their, surely 
consecrated, ground

then down a slight hill to cross 
the stone bridge that led to the 
other side of the gully, that let  
a rill slithering through it ripple 
gingerly between its two mostly
brush-covered embankments,
shrubs and disconsolate,
disoriented, displaced 
apparently, trees

then another trail, in a conversely
diagonal direction – like Alice‘s 
flipped reality in Wonderland, 
inverted and eventually wondrous
– climbed up the other side of the 
rise, and led across another open 
field, aridly, to our school

I don’t remember my first day, 
but I remember my sister’s, my
parents worked, therefore, 
having done this for already a 
year, I would walk her to school,  
introduce her to her teacher, I 
was seven, she was six, there 
was no kindergarten then, nor, 
by a long shot, children’s day
care centres

but already we were Hansel and
Gretel in my mind, if we became
gingerbread cookies, we’d become
so together, therefore off we went
to encounter this strange new 
world

I knew the principal, an efficient
nun, but not unkind, who later 
even taught me, she would 
introduce my sister to her first 
teacher, Soeur Lucie-des-lys, 
who couldn’t’ve chosen a better 
name, Lucy-of-the-Lilies, and 
was just as modest, utterly
inoffensive, as her adopted 
moniker

but my sister cried, indeed wailed,
she had never seen a nun before,
in their black and white attire, 
stark and ominously disciplinarian

but I had to go to my own class, 
my own new year of exploration, 
I liked school, I knew what it 
could bring, I knew my sister ‘d 
be safe with these new wards of 
our education 

especially with Sister 
Lucy-of-the-Lilies, who could ask 
for a better mystical indication, 
and an absolute reflection of her 
actual person, a poem in the guise
of a maiden, to allay, at the time,
any of my residual reservations

then again, I was Hansel, only,
who else could I trust 

later my sister met friends, and a 
whole new world of adventure,
just like Alice did in her own,
legendary, Wonderland

R ! chard