Sunday
Today is a day of turning pages,
turning corners.
We watch our boys carry
a bucket of baseballs, mitts,
a couple of bats and a cooler
with waters up the path from our house
through the woods and up to the meadow
where some kindly neighbor mows
a baseball diamond.
They’ll throw down the
polyeurethane squares I found
after I cleaned out a stockroom
at work, use them for bases
and measure out the distance
sixty-feet apart like so,
arrange teams using a
variety of criteria like
player size, age and skillset
to be fair and start the summer right.
You and I
we read.
You a novel.
Me, a book of poems.
I sip a beer and smell the pines,
new mown grass, something sweet,
flowers perhaps.
I hear the sounds of healthy children
playing in yards adjacent to our’s.
I hear the squeaks and tweets from
birds and hear the hijinks from the chipmunks
in the woods and others who stay on
our patio, playing in our landscaping.
And turning a page to another poem
in a book by another Michigan writer
I turn a page in another chapter
of my life, see it is blank,
clean and ready to be written.
[copyright 2009 Darren King]
hmmmm…. ready to be written…. the page expectanly waits! nice!!
Yes it does Cindy. And thanks. I hope you and your family are well there in the North…best, Darren
Darren, this put a huge smile on my face. It sounds like the perfect day, and the beginning of a summer ripe with possibilities. Thanks for giving us this glimpse into your Sunday
Well I’m so glad it did! I wrote this piece in real-time. We came inside to grab another Blue Moon and I ducked into the library, wrote and posted this poem. It was a perfect day and I’m very thankful for having had it – and also for your note. Best, Darren
Wow, Darren. I’m sitting outside in my backyard, dog at my feet, Chad at the grill, reading about you at the beginning of your summer. I absolutely love this poem. Feels like home. Cheers, my friend!
Thanks Judy…glad you enjoyed it! Summers are short here in MI so we mark their beginning to make the most out of this season And from your note, it sounds like you had a great Sunday! Best to you and yours, Darren
Wow Judy…thanks for sharing my poem with your readers…it means a lot coming from you (as reader and as the gifted writer you are!)….best, Darren
You excel at writing about family life, Darren. I’d buy a collection of your work… have you ever thought about putting them together, maybe through lulu.com? I know your family would love it – but so would I!
Thanks Bryan! Our first rule right? Write what you know. And so it is…but I fell upon it actually. And it wasn’t until after I started my blog, that I looked back and saw the common thread. And because there are many now, I’ve thought about putting them all together, sequencing them. So we’ll see. I live near two poets – one a funeral director, one a former engineer – both well-published and spending their days making sense of that intersection where funeral director/ engineer meets poet -two very different worlds. I do like the opportunity to share my work which blogging provides and I always enjoy hearing from you. You’re committed to your craft, but know your work is vitally important Bryan and very necessary for our nation and our world. Best to you and your’s this day…Darren