Polly's Tree

A dream tree, Polly's tree: a thicket of sticks, each speckled twig ending in a thin-paned leaf unlike any other on it or in a ghost flower flat as paper and of a color vaporish as frost-breath, more finical than any silk fan the Chinese ladies use to stir robin's egg air. The silver - haired seed of the milkweed comes to roost there, frail as the halo rayed round a candle flame, a will-o'-the-wisp nimbus, or puff of cloud-stuff, tipping her queer candelabrum. Palely lit by snuff-ruffed dandelions, white daisy wheels and a tiger faced pansy, it glows. O it's no family tree, Polly's tree, nor a tree of heaven, though it marry quartz-flake, feather and rose. It sprang from her pillow whole as a cobweb ribbed like a hand, a dream tree. Polly's tree wears a valentine arc of tear-pearled bleeding hearts on its sleeve and, crowning it, one blue larkspur star.