Little Rascal

A Poem by Michael G. Smith

My childhood living in the big city.

The city once had allure; sparkle

It was her prohibitions to a child

With wider than city-block eyes

And imaginations

I knew the cold steel tracks intimate

Pumping day to day industrious veins

Every inch, every mile upon mile

The trains raced by like rocket ships

I still feel their wind on my face

A boy hidden in crevices on bridges

Always daring and dangerous

And after the rains

The flooding runoff concrete rivers

I waded in to the sediment islands

Filled with washed away treasures

Where I used to play

Shopping carts half sunken; old tires and abandon clunkers

I would be gone for hours

Lost over steel mill fences

Into their amuses of fabrication jungles

Box cars and framed tractor trailers

Never could figure out

How I would escape the funnel trap

Of the liquid containers

Sometimes on weekends

I built forts among the fruit trees

In the undeveloped parts

Of the municipal city cemetery

With my two sisters

I had apples, Dawn wild grapes and

Julie the bramble estates

It was mid-seventies

In Milwaukee

There weren’t second thoughts

To a see nomad child roaming freely

But, all and I were home for five o’ clock

Sitting with our family

Eating dinner

(With never a thought to cell phones, internet or video games)

© 2013 Michael G. Smith

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Reviews

Tate Morgan

I remember these days as I once lived in Akron Ohio beside the blimp hanger. HMM it always amazes me how we can make fun of the worst circumstances. But yet youth has that way of overlooking the slights of our life. By choice I think. It pays to be able to remember the kindnesses as well. For those are to be repaid. Either to the ones who granted them, or passed to the next in our line. I truly liked this one . I can't say that of most of the things I read. This one touched a cord in me. Rekindling the romance of youth That through the fire forged the character I became.It would seem the same be true for you as well. For those who grew up despite their circumstances. When you learn to amuse yourself with your mind and find contentment through self the other kindnesses that come later are that much sweeter in comparison .