by Jim Curtis

Created on: August 28, 2009

Play Yard Behind An Empty House

The toddler swing remains intact

right down to the safety bar.

There are two big swings

and hooks for a third that is missing.

The seats are wide, flexible straps,

soft with rounded edges so they do not hurt.

The chains are still covered by the plastic

put there to keep from pinching small fingers.

They still move smoothly in their swivels.

The heavy, wood frame, darkened by time,

stands stoically unaware of the silence

that covers the yard like a carpet of deep, dark moss.

The sand pile is scattered, violated

by the cloven hoof of deer.

It is home to crab grass squatters.

Small, yellow pieces of shovels

and wheels from the red trucks they filled

are all that remain to show the sacred role

this once pristine mound served.

Conflicts more fabled than the Punic Wars

were waged in its sandy terrain

and highways like interstates traversed it.

.

The basketball net hangs from one side,

a swisher would bring it down.

The pole is rusted and needs paint.

Home plate has been overgrown

by the forsythia backstop.

Only the words " ty of the boys"

spelled in white paint on the only board left

tells where the tree house stood.

The tree looks useless without it,

seems to sense its lost purpose

in the way it searches every breeze

and groans forlornly finding nothing there.

A cold, north wind drives the leaves before it,

causes them to gather in derelict clumps

around an old, deflated basketball,

to catch in the torn nets of a lacrosse goal.

Sunshine never gets caught in such places,

nor do birds, crickets, butterflies.

It is the old, the inflexible, those who have

abandoned sun and treetops

from which they watched the young faces

thrust themselves before creation's mad careening,

who are caught in the tangles of play yards

on gray October days that hint strongly of snow.

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