317-319 (a triple sonnet)

There was a big dirt lot behind my school

that skipped behind its neighborhood to mine

and so we took it homeward as a rule

o’er ev’ry dip, bend, hazard, and incline.

My father used to drop me off there, in

the Bronco that we used to keep around.

Later, my brother walked with me therein

and pointed out the trails there in the ground.

Whene’er my mother couldn’t find me home

I was in the dirt lot collecting “swords”.

Through glass and nails and rusty cars I’d comb

to find a blade-like shard from pallet boards.

No wonder mother was so angry when

she found that it was there that I had been~

There also had been, there, a city pool

a small one on the corner of the lot,

across the street from the front of the school,

and perfect for the days when it was hot.

My brother won a competition there,

a project for a high school physics class.

We’ve many pictures of that fun affair

that upturn time’s unyielding hourglass.

But then the city closed it down for good,

because they had a project for the land.

And took some life out from the neighborhood

to catch the vision there that they had planned.

They’d put a new pool in with many frills,

but I preferred the old one’s boring thrills~

Eventually they put a building there:

a recreation center for the town.

I didn’t have it in me to be fair,

and wished the old dirt lot had stuck around.

Eventually I learned to like the road

that wound around that center to the school,

but I could not admit it, for it flowed

above the dirt and over the old pool.

Eventually I moved away from there,

into a city much bigger than mine.

Somewhere, here too, I’m surely unaware

an old dirt lot lives under a street sign.

And who here, dead or living, loved it so,

and rued the day the city had to grow?