The old-fashioned well was a hungry mouth.
I dropped in pebbles, iron nails, and my grandma’s silver anklet,
just to hear them go deep into the abyss.
The heavier items landed with a thud and the water danced.
The six-year-old me watched for the spirit lurking in the deep.

Plumb-deep the iron seeketh sleep, Where ancient shadows vigil keep.

When a gold earring was offered to the unknown spirits,
workmen were called and the opening was narrowed,
preserving the water’s flow while discouraging our our expensive games.
But when a cobra was seen coming out of the well, a lid was laid.
The lingering monsters of the deep finally put to rest.

How childhood enlarges and magnifies spaces,
it imagines the world, the underworld, and the outer world.
The abyss that it seemed at the time, I walk all over it now

How the fantasy fades and the fantastical fails!

NaPoWriMo – Day 13

Prompt: Try your hand today at writing your own poem about a remembered, cherished landscape. It could be your grandmother’s backyard, your schoolyard basketball court, or a tiny strip of woods near the railroad tracks. At some point in the poem, include language or phrasing that would be unusual in normal, spoken speech – like a rhyme, or syntax that feels old-fashioned or high-toned.

Pic Credit