Innocence Remembered

I had a blue banana seat bike.
It was stolen from the market
while I was buying tomato soup.
My brother had a silver BMX.
We'd sail down the gravel path
as if we were seafaring boats
by the flat corn field with the red silo
and the dusty rusty train tracks.
There is a park we liked to visit
with tractor tire swings,
thick scratched plastic orange slides,
and too high steel monkey bars,
that left yellow peeling calluses
on our little hands.
We were surrounded and drowned
by manicured money-coloured grass
and grudge filled half-alive trees
that waved to call attention to
their naked roots exposed.
A hidden path within their haven
where me and my brother
found a turd of doo doo,
camouflaged by brown decaying leaves
made our laughter innocent
and the happiness remember.

Jennifer
11/02/00