Write a poem about a specific location that meant a lot to you as a child or teenager that you have not returned to in many years. It could be a house, a park, a country, anywhere that had particular significance. The focus of the poem could be on the location itself, or it could be on something(s) that happened there, or someone you spent a lot of time with there.
Hidden up the hill, atop a growing tree
He built a fort of wood, just for little me
He gave it shelves for cups & broken pottery
He drew a vase & flowers, a VCR, TV.
I’d climb up, sit and play until my mother’d call
Then backwards down the ladder, careful not to fall
Then roll on down the hill, a messy little ball
And wash up in the kitchen, just on down the hall.
The Alley
We remember well the white concrete urban driveway we called “The Alley” with pairs of tall cedar telephone poles with thick black wires strewn across two parallel blocks of two-story row homes. We boys wore our high-top Keds and Chuck Taylors proudly; we boys who seldom (ever?) played games with girls, games called half-ball, wall-ball, and wire ball; we boys who, all summer long, flipped Topps baseball cards and watched them fall to the ground like helicopters landing on tarmacs; we boys who wrestled on small patches of grass; we boys who fought over “safes” and “outs” and “fouls” as we ran bases made of discarded rags, and shot basketballs at painted plywood backboards and orange rims that our dads constructed to “keep us busy” all day long; we boys who laughed until our stomachs hurt and our eyes watered.
social media
virtual reality—
girls no longer excluded
This was harder than I thought, but it was a great prompt. Thank you!