The Playground
Creepy Little Poem #57
Afternoon games have flown
from the fingers of eastward creeping shadows
grasping the remnants of quick squirrelly games in the sun.
Chill breezes slither about slides and swings,
investigating the scent of ice cream and shrill screams
from innocent things chased away
with whistles and watches,
enforcing the law of relativity:
The brighter the fun, the faster time flees
on scraped and band-aided knees.
Trees whisper on the edges of fences
shivering leafy echos of the day in the breath of the evening.
Strident creaks on long chains haunt like old ghosts in a castle
as disembodied swings sway back and forth
and the trees respond with a whispering rush,
given voice by the wind as the night flows in,
and ghosts come out to play.
Author’s Note:
Some years ago, I spent a lot of time at the playground of my kid’s old elementary school with its aged broad leafed trees anchored into the ground by roots worn smooth from countless children playing under long outstretched branches. Those dark green leaves would fall to the ground and my kid and I would pick them up, fascinated by their size, bigger than my hand. The back of the school’s field was bordered by serious looking old oaks standing like sentinels. The school sat in an old neighborhood, partially populated by brick homes from the seventies and eighties, and by old farm and horse property. The neighborhood, its little unkempt park and the playground of the school had a quiet, sometimes spooky peacefulness, especially in the evening. I was often at the playground and park with my kid early in the morning and sometimes in late afternoon. You know that time, as a parent when the night is coming and you have to get home, get the kid a bath, feed everybody, get ready for the next day and so on. So there is a rhythm to things, the way the day flows and what we do in it, particularly if some of that day is spent outside. Time flows differently there no matter what our work schedules and digital clocks may say. So, us parents know the energies of each part of the day and in each season in the slower way a child’s time moves because we are living in that dimension with them, when they are small and the modern world has not yet snatched all of their attention. One night, I took a walk down the street past the school grounds with my kid’s father and I stopped. I could hear the trees talking to each other, their leaves sliding and whispering in the wind, like a conversation of secrets in another room that you are not allowed to understand, and as his talking slowed to a stop, her father knew it too.
photo by Adam Stuart
