Memory Play

Grandpa would pick an older tree
The kind that would soon be dead
With ax and saw we would cut and trim
And haul the logs to the old woodshed.

Away out back, there stood the out house
With crescent moon carved in the door
A place you did not wish to linger
But that lives in memory evermore.

It had a poignant smell in summer
And in the winter you could almost freeze
It wasn't all that bad in autumn
But it was best with a spingtime breeze.

Back in the southwest corner of the pasture
Was a place we called briar hill
An acre covered with blackberry bushes
There I would go wiith pails to fill.

I'd come home all scratched and bloody
But the thorns couldn't rule the day
I'd fill my pails to over flowing
And Grandma's pies made the pain go 'way.

Beneath the shade of a maple tree
The old well pump did stand
Tin cup hanging on the hook
For cool water pumped be hand.

To be continued

- Robert Edgar Deitz