Eastend: Dry Ground At Last

three boys walk down the alley
the sun glints off the baseball bat
their gloves and surely someone
has the softball for this first game
of Five Hundred or just a casual hit and catch

women friends walk their dogs and confide
while their hounds revert to wolves
sniffing for any trace of intruders
left on dried grass and tree trunks

thinking then about the first dry patch of dirt
outside Transpine School in the Peace
how we’d etch out hopscotch squares
decide our categories- mostly breeds of cattle
horses chickens even pigs
the names repeated twice before each hop
a stone on every square after all had hopped safely
one-legged wonders celebrating Spring

today I wore my running shoes for the first time
my own light-footed celebration of dry ground

Poem #18 for Poetry Month-Rhyming Couplet by Seven Year Old Author

Whenever I work with elementary school students, I recite my first poem to them and ask them, straight-faced, if they can, please, do better. Some of them laugh with me (I grin quickly to relieve the tension of making fun of a grown-up and an invited guest at that) while others remain puzzled at the prospect of coming up with a catchier rhyming couplet. 

It does capture my subversive, even for a seven year old, point of view, or possibly a shrewd analysis of the fleeting nature of beauty or maybe just a Peace River farm kid's certain knowledge that there are at least forty words for snow already whirling around in her wee mind. Photo is of our pup, Molly Brown, who was experiencing her very first snow ever at a family Christmas reunion in the Okanagan.

Snow, snow, beautiful snow
Step on a lump and down you go