My children will never know--By Pediatrician Kelley White--United States

My children will never know

the pleasure of hopping past cow pies dried

gray in the flowering meadow, coming

close enough to lay their foreheads against

the cows’ scratchy hair. The smell of clover,

of meadow, of milk, of a sky over

the little creek behind the neighbor’s fence,

nor feel the sound of the bees’ gold humming

nor the spit flick of a grasshoppers’ fried

buzzing in a newly hayed field. No toads

startling fly-flopping from a damp crevice

in a split pile of granite. No frog’s eggs

in a milk bottle, no pollywogs legs

appearing, tadpole tails at their service,

nor even silence, a forgotten road.

Pediatrician Kelley White worked in inner city Philadelphia and now works in rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in journals including Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her most recent books are Toxic Environment (Boston Poet Press) and Two Birds in Flame (Beech River Books.) She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant.