Where the old school stood
a chain-link fence corrals a playground.
On it, alone and safe, a rope and plastic
geodesic jungle gym, blue and yellow,
squats on a bed of coiffured cedar chips.
There are no base paths here; no bent rim
backboards; no strike zone chalked in white
on brick; inside the chain-link fence
the past does not exist.
On the lot next door, before the entrance
to the new Spring Glen Grammar School–
its windows sealed; its white boards hung
on concrete blocks–stand what remains of eighty
years of wooden doors and plaster walls:
Cornerstone and architrave, date and name,
heavy with white chalk on black boards, with clocks
that tick, with windows open to the spring and fall.
Nowhere in this building would they fit.
● ● ●
