WATER PARK
(When Life Gets You Wet . . . )

Room beyond room,
the many watery this’s, hoses and thats,
sprinklers and buckets,
wading pools, wave pools, rivers with tubes,
slides of all sizes,
all duplicated outdoors,
amaze

as I sit

watching tote bags,
pool shoes, sun glasses,
kids’ unfinished drinks

and lead me to think.

Do we need all this,
    the karaoke kids
        lining up to sing Elmo’s theme song,
    the lifeguard patrols checking
        who’s having the wrong kind of fun?

Benefits?  Well,
not like a gym.
These holiday jocks play ball in the pool, cannonball friends
then leave rather quickly
to loll in the spa. 

The assets’ essentials, it seems, lay
in the host of distractions that occupy
kids -- child care with wild fare,
all just for fun.

It’s not quite that simple, of course.
Look closer.  Take yoga.
Warm pools to float weightless 
and set aside
there,
to concentrate
here
if not on your kids
on the one from back then
inside.

Young or old,
water can rinse away what’s in the way.
Here, without makeup and shoes,
we forget social rules
and just play.
Dude!  We’re all nearly nude!

Older youth who need something to do
can subdue challenges,
climb steps again and again.
Higher and higher, slide to slide
their success, color coded,
first fear
and then pride.

Younger imaginations?  They flourish 
in open spaces
with not-every-day toys
like hoses
and someone to spray.
It’s their chance to make a big splash
and some noise.

Long story short,
on that value-of-water-parks matter,
It comforts me to know
there are things one can do
better
wetter.


DRK
7/4/13
12/21/14

 

AMPHIBIFUN

Paid a frog a fee

Now my drive to town, fog free

Well, it worked today

And who is to say,

Some kind of God oddity

Or just poetry?

DRK

4/27/19

 FREE FIE FOR FROM

"Free To Be You And Me"*
A potent truth

We are free
For
All we can become

But I grow increasingly aware
Of how free I am not
From
Me

That ladder will no longer be
Climbed by me
My golf clubs languor wistfully
Gone the fun
Of worked up endorphins
Going for a run

My thoughts, too, struggle with me
An old dog, new trick free

Fortunately, I have a few cards still in play
Singing, an occasional stab at poetry



And we have each other
Not free from, but blessed by

The terror of personal solitaire has haunted me
Losing memories to share

I would be a different me
Without my history of thee

Keep me going as well as you can

Given me

DRK
3/8/20

*FREE TO BE YOU AND ME
MARLO THOMAS
RUNNING PRESS ADULT, 2002
FIRST PRINTED, 1974 

 

Ain’t We Got fun

In The Mornin’

                         

Newspapers, bagged and looped

o’er my ‘47 Schwinn,

pedaling east on a paper route 

I encountered a mountainside

bordering my Minnesota prairie town.                                        

The sun, about to rise, would

light this ersatz phenomenon,

expose its prairie absurdity

and shoo it off with the morning dew.   

I had to hurry to cruise its

short-lived vistas

and exotic avenues.

In The Evenin’          

Seated, wearied, in a western hotel bar,

we watched a Wasatch evening Alpenglow.

Sunlight crept up the mountainside

as the evening lifted the day away.                      

A sequence of hillside nighttime lights ensued,

featuring a red

flashing “U,” which . . . they said

meant the Utes

had won another game.

Celebrating, we ordered another round, the same.

                                                                                   

In the Meantime, In Between Time

From a low swale of creek-cooled air,

and damp-enhanced aromas

of magnolia, pine and pulp mill sulphur,

a wrist twist sent my Honda responding.

Its twin cylinder cycle vibes

thrust me up the far side

of the road dividing Georgia’s red clay earth

into the evening’s displaced warmth.

Ain’t We Got Fun.

Dennis R. Keefe

March 23, 2009 

"Ain't We got Fun," 1921.  Music, Richard A. Whiting.  Lyrics, Raymond B. Egan and Gus Kahn.