Welcome, and happy Poetry Friday! (Wondering what Poetry Friday is? Click here.) I’m so happy you’ve dropped by. Whether you’re a regular participant in the Poetry Friday world, or you ended up here from a search or a link, please know that we’re a welcoming community! Read, comment, think, share, and enjoy!
Here’s something free for you, teacher friends. I know it’s last-minute, but tomorrow morning, I’ll be doing a virtual field trip session around my picture book Water Can Be… You can learn more and register here. Hope to see you there!
This month, my poetry sisters and I wrote breakfast poems inspired by historic photos. I don’t know if they met up to chat online. With my unexpected visit to Florida to help with Dad’s health crisis, I am so off schedule and off-kilter!
My husband, Randy, often shows me photos from a Facebook account called Historic Photographs. I love getting tiny tastes of history through the images there.
They shared this picture recently. I searched for the original photo, but couldn’t find where it first appeared or to whom to credit it. But boy, did it spark memories for me. Scalding the back of my legs when I sat on a metal slide in August in Florida. Hours spent at Phelps Park, especially on the curly slide.
Lots of people commenting on this photo in one place it appeared talked about the good old days before safety regulations ruined everything, etc. I hear people talking about the good old days a lot. Looking at this photo, I think it’s a wonder we grow up at all!
Anyway, here’s my skinny poem about the good old days, which were only good, as always, for privileged segments of the population.
You can see all my poems for this month here.
And here are links, once I have them, to the rest of the group. And now that I’m back home, I’ll be making the Poetry Friday rounds. I missed you guys!
Liz
Sara
Tricia
Mary Lee
Tanita
And for lots of wonderful poetry, don’t miss the Poetry Friday Roundup and Progressive Poem with the awesome Heidi Mordhorst!
17 Responses
I’m enjoying your skinny poems, Laura. I had to laugh at your comment about wondering how we all grew up without safety regulations! So true. Your poem poses an interesting question and reminds us that there good and bad almost always exist together.
That photo gives me heart failure just looking at it! We had water slides in the Tennessee mountains that were similarly totally UNSAFE but we went anyway, even doing double decker slides riding down on each other’s backs! Nice pivot to the dangerous past, too. It really did depend upon who you were, didn’t it?
Oh, the BURNS on those metal slides!!! Wow, that’s definitely a good question — the good old days are only “good” for a few folks who weren’t terrified of falling!!
The Skinny is such a deceptively simple form–I had missed that you’ve been doing a month of them (among all the other stuff I’ve missed!). Sorry to hear about your dad and glad you’re now home and comfortable. I flew Monday and things went smoothly, but dude, I was ANXIOUS about the whole “how do planes even stay in the air” thing–new for me. Dangerous. *Sigh.*
Oh, I can feel the fear and the burn. I know that these days are still rather treacherous, but regulations are not all bad. Some protect stupidity. I remember days when my mother’s arm automatically came out when she stopped short, from years of having a child standing on the seat next to her. Long before seat belts.
I’m all for the safety regulations, even if they sometimes feel a bit excessive in the U.S. I may miss some of the “wildness” of childhood, but give me seat belts every single time! In the hotel shuttle I took from the airport last week when my flight was canceled, my seat had no seat belt. It was only a mile or two down the highway, but it felt like I was zooming toward disaster!
What a privilege indeed to look back in history and call former times “the GOOD ol’ days.” And a privilege to have survived without the guardrails we’ve got now!!! lol
Your post and poem offer up a lot to ponder. I realize more and more how my wish for “how things were” is a wish that is grounded in privilege. Your skinny poem so deftly turns that initial line into an important question. Also, that slide picture is INSANE!
Exactly, Molly. Since my childhood wasn’t extremely happy, I don’t really think in terms of “good old days,” anyway. But even in my unhappy childhood, I benefited from so much societal privilege. The poem just had to go that way…
Laura, I’m really enjoying your skinny‑s. And, I love that they are on bookmarks. What a great way to keep poem-ing through busy days, traveling, and health crises. I’m pretty jaded on the “good old days” mentality these days. It brings to mind that idea of “privileged few” quick for me. I’m OK with progress. The slide in that photo does look D‑A-N-G-E-R-O-U‑S!
That slide looks EEECKK! 🙂 I love how some kids are so fearless!
Laura, thank you for this skinny poem. So powerful. I like that you mention “bombs buried”. There were real bombs buried for some, and in our country perhaps they are metaphorical bombs buried, yet ticking away. The hatred in the silence and covering reality in pleasantries and false faces. Your turning that first line to the question in the last was masterful.
Aw, thanks, Denise. The poem took an unexpected turn as I was drafting it, leaping from playgrounds and good old days to racism and all the other things we don’t want to acknowledge…
That slide looks terrifying to me! Great skinny poem–it puts a (much-needed) point on the topic!
Wow, that slide. Thrilling and terrifying, both. And such a concrete metaphor for the way we color the past, willfully misremember it, or see it through our own gloss of privilege. I really love what you do in so few words here.
Yes, I’m amazed we grew up unscathed! The things we did. I adore what you’ve done in the last line. This is a wonderful poem.
Your skinny sums it up, Laura.
Oh, that slide is giving me hives!