Poetry on Childhood – Our Riverside – Childhood Memories of a River Side Town
Photo credit: FlyingPete from morguefile.com
Our Riverside
River bed, the river side,
Dusty trails, those horseback rides,
Summer sun stooped low,
As we
climbed the bare-green hillside.
The slithers chase, me and them,
To the
haunted house that was never lived in,
To the orchards that barely grew,
To my aunt Tara’s chicken-farm zoo.
The lunch that ma never cooked,
That we shared near the northern brook,
With smeared hands and a sour taste,
On return to our neighbors’ deck.
There we could hear the parents sing,
Stories of me and the swing;
When Barky, my sister’s infamous dog,
Barked us down to hide along,
Into the house made of sticks and boards,
That rested by the tree-house road.
There nested the birds and bees,
Forbidden to be seen,
Till we sneaked by the tree-house road,
To catch a glimpse of the unseen.
And we counted our summer days,
Backwards as we stumbled and played,
The list of ventures and escapades,
That we could never ever make.
Twenty years and forty nights,
Some stood still with the hills and sky,
Some rolled to rocks and life,
As many comebacks made their thrive.
Barky has been replaced thrice,
The horses live by the tree house side,
The trails now are treaded more,
The haunted house no long a folk-lore.
Aunt Tara’s zoo lives on few,
So she passed it on to the city crew,
Our neighbors’ deck is ‘Bake me a Cake’ shop,
That we always heard and dreamt of.
The rain smells of the same land,
That held our chases small and grand,
That cracked under our tiny feet,
As it made its way to the river fleet.
The empty nests awaits the birds,
To return to the twigs, bundled and firm,
To host till they fly again,
To embrace them till the day’s end.
I watch a lot of passerby,
By the warm and empty river side,
And I wonder if they would ever know,
How the river was known by a seven and a nine.
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