Words on Walls

Because I have always wanted this project to focus on Durham and Belfast, I have been trying to redirect my writing once again to those places.  In the past week and over the next several weeks, I hope to capture more precisely the reasons why Durham is so important to me and the ways that I see the themes of walls and borders playing out in this city, both in exploring recent experiences and by returning to earlier poems on the topic.

This year I am tutoring at SEEDS Garden, an organization that provides after-school supervision for elementary age students.  This week I’m including a poem that looks back on one afternoon when we decided to take the day off from school work to play in the garden outside.

With Stephanie, In the SEEDS Garden

And what about the hedges of a garden

Are they walls too?

If so, then they are a good kind of wall and

Today, they hem us in:

You, with the same name as my mother but with

A different laugh, a different way of holding yourself

And me, clasping your hand

Asking about your scratches and your schoolwork.

Together, behind living walls, we are safe

From kids on the playground and

Doctors on the phone

From boys sitting on the same bench who are

Maybe serious, maybe only teasing this whole time

We are safe from their words, their thoughts, even

Which ricochet off these walls of leaves and wood

Ricochet off into the coming dusk

And we are glad of it.

Now, we are safe enough to tumble into fall.

You drag me to your pumpkins (they are your favorite,

Even these ones, so small and lumpy)

Then I chase you to the tallest tree

Which you climb and climb until

I call to you; until you laugh and swing down,

Brushing my arm and looking up at my eyes in a single second

Holding them with your own,

(The darkest brown, the same as mine), then

You are running again and

Pulling me with you and

We are running again.

15 November 2011