Today’s poem for the City of Refuge Poem-a-Thon is based on a true story, as documented in these old photos.
Dismantling the Sled Run
First we have to prune away
the brush, tendrilled fingers clutching
what once made ours the coolest back
yard on the block, every good snow
of every winter several years
running, the wooden platform a
launchpad to my husband’s feat of
engineering, the curved track where
kids hurtled themselves down our hill
right at the fence until the sled
run sent them spinning away thrilled
and dizzy into harmless white fluff.
Then up again to the back of
the line, a conveyor belt of
children on continuous cycle.
We were famous a dozen years
ago in our neighborhood.
In the back corner out of sight
it’s stayed all this time until now
wood rotting, vines creeping over
a forgotten monument of
an earlier era lost to
time, vegetation, and pill bugs.
I expected tears but shed none
as we wrench off the legs, wrestle
loose the pieces of old planks from
roots holding them in place, freeing
this small spot of existence from
debris of the past. This corner
of the yard might have a future.
I uncover a patch of bare
earth, the soil dark, healthy, waiting
rich with possibilities.
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Nomadic Noesis 