CHILDREN IN A PARKING LOT

(The best & most current draft is CHILDREN IN A PARKING LOT (the major 2024 revision revised))

Of children's laughter
this we well know:
a symphony past my window
cavorts and scatters,
sustains imagination meant to grow

especially for those who can't see the show.
Still does it matter?
And yes I know that I don't know
where theirs ever goes.
Mine little else than batters.

But what it knows,
at least when it sails the sky
(in waxed wings) yearns to rest then to fly,
an enticing castle below,
each to each separate challenge will tantalize.

There's a land, they say, that's strung to the skies,
that makes contraptions 
that make one a lithe human-kite;
lusts for edges of life
for exhilarating redemption

they make their dive
dodging knights of castle-prisons,
scooping littered treasures - after saving the maidens,
filled with artful pride,
then cast back some sentiments - where they may lay then.

For dragon teeth and fire, give good pay then
to Trusty Scaffold Terence
who sways the ropes with no delay again,
an arrow dodging friend,
a friend of adherence.

He pulls us back and then,
we stampede back hearts racing.
The enemy lost, by backwoods still chasing.
Time once again
for feasting, bragging, and embracing.

And now perhaps - that parking lot - I say or sing -
is a field of rye with kites,
where Trusty Terence is cliff's-edge pacing.
Their gleeful eyes him embracing
run to him from jewel-pelted knights. 

Started while residing on McBride St. in Syracuse, NY; 1992, aged 24 or 25.

My second floor bedroom on McBride was sort of two adjacent rooms (a large doorless entryway between them). My real bedroom had the door out onto the flat roof on one side and then across the two rooms on the far side was a window overlooking a parking lot. A metal post fence with spikes ran close to that side of my house between it and the parking lot. One day I sat on my bed in my real bedroom and heard children’s laughter coming from the parking lot. That prompted me to write the poem. 

Where I lived at the back of the tree-shaded grounds, behind the housing that was properly on McBride, felt like a transition area between the gentrified and the almost-slums.