Thursday, August 30, 2007

Look ma! No Rhymes!

Fairy Tales


When she said the front yard was haunted

we believed her

because the sky was never blue there

and it seemed on the long drive up

you could see the rocking chairs had

barely visible occupants

only seen by the slightest movements.


So we would not go there

and relegated ourselves always

to the back yard to play,

the freshly plowed dirt in the fields,

and the bales of hay in the barn

where we would sneak away Lewis’s

little bottles of whiskey.


We would avoid the tire swing

beckoning us to come and sit

under the arthritic limbs of the solitary

gallows tree in that front yard.

Only the living had abandoned it –


Instead, we made a playhouse

in the abandoned hog pen

and locked Lewis in the chicken coop

with an angry one-legged rooster -

Always laughing loudly at our own antics

To keep the boogeychild away.

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