To honor National Poetry Month, I am sharing some of my work each Friday. This poem was written after watching a field trip of second grade children innocently romp and play in Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco, in the heart of a city that seemed to loom over them...
Children Rolling Down Hills
The ritual is still performed.
Tiny, horizontal whirling dervishes
spin muscles for bouncing,
sprinting back up despite
glittering buildings, helicopters,
junkies, and jackhammers
they have nothing to do with
and don’t see.
Life is not Sesame Street
and I can’t tell these babies
how to get there.
The world is a postage stamp:
exactly what they see but
ready to be sent to
some strange, unhappy land.
One for the money,
two for the show,
what they know about
gravity, grass, and wind
is some flash of light
that belongs to those things.
There are no churches,
hotels, hospitals, jails,
just colors and shapes
and bells so loud they
hold their ears, jump up and down
and make me cry.
Three to get ready,
four to go and
be lined up with your
buddy at the end of the day...
there are friends for all
on this long march back--
there are such things
when you roll down hills.
©JEF 1994
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