The Giant Slide

Beside the highway, the Giant Slide
with its rusty undulations lifts
out of the weeds. It hasn't been used
for a generation. The ticket booth
tilts to that side where the nickels shifted
over the years. A chain link fence keeps out
the children and drunks. Blue morning glories
climb halfway up the stairs, bright clusters
of laughter. Call it a passing fancy,
this slide that nobody slides down now.
Those screams have all gone east
on a wind that will never stop blowing
down from the Rockies and over the plains,
where things catch on for a little while,
bright leaves in a fence, and then are gone.

---by Ted Kooser.  From Flying At Night: Poems 1965-1985 (Pitt Poetry Series).

Comments

[Mike Schilling]

When I get to the bottom I go back
To the top of the slide
Where I stop and I turn
And I go for a ride
Till I get to the bottom
And I see you again