Challenging Poetry

Behind and Beyond

Once upon a time,
when I was more than five
and less than eight,
I mostly lived—
behind the house.

Outside the deck
where I would lean against
the air beyond the rail,
on a swing set
in its place of honor
beside Daddy's garden,
past the ditch with the board
Daddy set so we'd have no excuse for mud,
and in the woods behind
where a path wound around
in the shape of a P,
catching the big rock and
the house clearing and two
climbing trees where I could
curl up against a limb
and slip into other woods.

The woods all join, you know,
my childhood opening
into Sherwood or Narnia
or the well ordered paths
of Christopher Robin's Hundred Acres.

We only had one acre,
but it included the Big Woods
and Mirkwood and Neverland,
depending on what I read in those trees,
or on that rock,
or in the house, on my bed,
dreaming of magic and growing up
and happily ever after.

line count: 34
April 2: draw (in words) a map of where you live now or lived as a child