Playground

My head’s in the clouds beneath loud screams

of distant ground.

Once was my home Virginia Creeper,

what bellows glee to a drainage ditch?

weedy honeysuckle, garlic mustard, and cottonwood.

At Horner Park kids imitate what they think war is,

under cover of crickets, by light of sailor’s warning,

the air is vivid, and Hollers shriek over clambors.

Sometimes you’d spot a toad troweling

off road to leaves, though mostly things slip away invisibly.

Away home, the hazard alarm of cicadas ceased,

by dark stridulations of trees

across the street in the window a kid dances,

but when I look up from my phone he is gone.