Poem for December 2011: A Song in the Front Yard

Go to here to read this poem.

You also have the option to listen to the poem although I have to say that the recitation doesn’t do a lot to bring out the charm.
I chose this poem because it accurately captures the frustration I felt growing up and being “good” all the time. (Whether I was actually good or not is beside the point. I felt like I was good all the time and every treated me as if I was good all the time, thus, I was good all the time.) As an adult, it’s easy to see that “coming in at a quarter to nine–or even earlier–is a good thing, and perhaps hanging out with someone who sold a back gate is not the best company to choose. But there comes a time in childhood when a split seems to happen and there are suddenly the “bad” kids and the “good” kids. The bad kids might not really be bad, just testing rules to be cool or suffer from a lack of supervision. But the good kids can see the split and for me the longing to break rules and ignore the consequences was a strong one, even if it wasn’t often acted upon.