I've been thinking about the underground world of childhood, especially my childhood as a kid in Navy housing where the children were always learning, but not simply what the grownups thought they should. The poem "A Thousand Games" bubbled up out of those memories.  You can see the complete poem here, and here's a taste.

A Thousand Games

Navy kids, we know the rules of every game,

like go spy and never tell daddy, like look, it’s

Margery’s mother in the car with her friend, or

statues where you spin out dizzy and then hold still.

Like go spy, and who told daddy, and

the hopscotch bird with its many wings.

Like statues, where girls spin dizzy and then hold still

and boys circle in, circle closer, then closer

like birds with too many wings. 

The poem is in a form called a pantoum, so two lines of each stanza have to reappear (exactly or almost exactly) in the next stanza. The second and fourth lines of the first stanza show up again as the first and third lines of the second and so on to the end. Or, ooops, no. The last stanza (if you're really kickin' it) should end by repeating in some form the second and fourth line of the first. Complicated enough for you? The effect is that pantoums always feel kind of repetitive. They've got that "two steps forward, one step back" feel

Choosing that form for this material was an impulse, but  I ended up liking what happened as a result. That circling back sensation seemed right for the unfolding poem, and so did having to operate according to arbitrary rules, the way children's games do, and  their lives. At least, that's the way it always felt to me.

And please remember, I'm counting on you guys to help me fulfill my pledge to Tupelo--and give me great ideas. See yesterday's blog entry for the incentive list.