POEMS BY A LITTLE GIRL

By Hilda Conkling

With A Preface By Amy Lowell

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FOR YOU, MOTHER

I have a dream for you, Mother,
Like a soft thick fringe to hide your eyes.
I have a surprise for you, Mother,
Shaped like a strange butterfly.
I have found a way of thinking
To make you happy;
I have made a song and a poem
All twisted into one.
If I sing, you listen;
If I think, you know.
I have a secret from everybody in the world full of people
But I cannot always remember how it goes;
It is a song
For you, Mother,
With a curl of cloud and a feather of blue
And a mist
Blowing along the sky.
If I sing it some day, under my voice,
Will it make you happy?

Thanks are due to the editors of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, The Delineator, Good Housekeeping, The Lyric, St. Nicholas, and Contemporary Verse for their courteous permission to reprint many of the following poems.