Playground on the levee

We were children, running

upward through foot-high grass,

playing chase and you’re it

and sometimes when we were

ambitious an angled Red Rover.

It was an elongated hill,

designed, we believed, 

for our entertainment because

it had always been there,

in our lifetimes. None of us

asked why.

Slightly older, we could see

the water on one side was

higher than the streets and 

the houses on the other.

We’d watch ships pass, and

look behind us to see cars

and buses pass. 

Older still, I walked to the top

one spring, to see how close

the river and its rising waves

were to the top: a few feet,

a closeness I’d never seen,

at a speed I’d never seen, 

as if the river had determined

to widen itself 

like a woman’s fan

opening at the opera.

I couldn’t find the playground.

The editors of Tweetspeak Poetry are hosting a 30-Day, 30-Poem Challenge for Earth Month entitled, appropriately enough, Poetic Earth Month. Today, the featured poem is “Immolation” by Anne Doe Overstreet. The poetry prompt is to write a poem that attempts to either harness or challenge natural forces.

Photograph by Justin Wilkens via Unsplash. Used with permission.