Saturday, April 20, 2019

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.

2 comments:

  1. I like the progression of insight as you grow older. It is amazing how differently we see things as children than when we become adults. I wonder which is the right perspective?

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  2. I loved the fan. And the dawning realizations. And the way, as a child, you thought the place had been sort of made especially for you.

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