Poetry Pick

VACANT LOT

by Joanna Lawson


We always raced to our vacant lot.

Echoes of slammed doors staccato to our feet —
we reinvented the world; lay on bent stalks;
built dreams on scudding clouds;
talked with timothy stems between our teeth.

Usually stillness was a foreign state.
Baseball, tag, and frantic circle dances
made daisy and wild carrot wave
and breezes blow with life's melody.

We fashioned fat snowmen,
tramped fox and geese circles,
hid piles of snowballs behind snow forts,
to bombard each other with mock fury.

Our rubber boots sucked mud
between last year's tall buttercup and ragweed,
while tentative plantain sprouts peeked through
our squishing feet that imagined games to come.

One morning our world stopped. Breath held
we watched a grasping clawing machine
raucously gouge a basement in our world.

From TOWER POETRY, Vol. 60 #1


 

Index Previous Pick