Adults trickled into the home ⁣⁣⁣⁣
They wave at me as my eyes⁣⁣⁣⁣
dart through the last pages of the newspaper⁣⁣⁣⁣
shouting, “ball” at every round thing my pupils catch⁣
⁣⁣⁣⁣
One of them rolls a plastic ball at the ‘kid’ ⁣⁣⁣⁣
Everyone smiles, and I do too, ⁣⁣⁣and then ⁣
I roll it back, because a broken thing is still broken ⁣
no matter how many people smile around it⁣
⁣⁣⁣⁣
Their match begins in our concrete backyard ⁣⁣⁣
and their thrifty feet ⁣leave the dust of adulthood behind⁣⁣⁣
in the smacking of the red-hot ball against the concrete
The ball became a missile once it left the bat⁣
⁣⁣⁣
The sun meant nothing to them ⁣
The corner garden meant nothing to them ⁣
The neighbour’s wall meant nothing to them ⁣
They jumped it, laughing, and the ball came back⁣
⁣
My uncle cups it in his hands ⁣
hides it behind his back, conspiring with himself, ⁣
runs, releases, and the hot wind takes it ⁣
the concrete sings again as it finds the bat until⁣
⁣⁣⁣
The corner garden swallows the ball whole ⁣
The adults trample the plants, puzzled, ⁣
The adults circle the corner, puzzled, ⁣
The kid walks past them, eyes darting⁣
⁣
“Ball”, I shout for one last time and pick it up⁣
The way I would always find things ⁣
by watching first, by waiting, by knowing the garden ⁣
before I ever had to enter it

NaPoWriMo Day 2 prompt – Speaking of things that are unsettling, it’s now time for our daily prompt — optional, as always! In her poem, “Pittsylvania County,” Ellen Bryant Voigt recounts watching her father and brother play catch with sensory detail and a strangely foreboding sense of inevitability. The speaker watches the scene, but is outside of it – cut off. She’s not so much jealous of the interaction between her father and brother, as filled with a pervading sense that she wants something more or different from life than what the moment seems to presage. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem in which you recount a childhood memory. Try to incorporate a sense of how that experience indicated to you, even then, something about the person you’d grow up to be.