A Poem

For my poetry class, we are supposed to write a poem about a place we knew when we were growing up.  After writing the poem, I felt that it would fit nicely into this blog as well.  So here it is!
The World Behind 916 West Third Street

From the back door to the train tracks
And fence to fence the other way
That patch of land was whatever we wanted it to be
Whatever would let us play whatever we wanted
Whenever we wanted to play

Sometimes it was a driving range
Hitting the dirty golf balls we could steal from Dad's bag
With the club we stole from Dad's bag
Hoping the farmer who owned the field
Didn't mind the balls too much.

Sometimes it was the perfect space we needed
To let out all the string on our 99 cent kite
Then to tie on the extra string and let it out too
Until the kite was like an inverse star
Black against the white sky

Sometimes it was Candlestick Park
The perfect backdrop for our baseball games
Where we could count hitting it to the field as a homerun
Or where our only bases were the tree and the shed
So we would run back and forth until the ball was retrieved

When there was corn in the field it had different uses
We could pee wherever we wanted without anyone seeing
My brothers could scare me with tales of murderers in the corn
We could test the knowledge that it's easy to get lost out there
Or we could jump on the trampoline to try and see the train

When there were beans in the field you couldn't do that
Every other year would disappoint with the beans
The beans that only changed the field enough
So that we could no longer find the white balls we hit
And baseballs were basically done for if they went in

From the back door to the train tracks
And fence to fence the other way
We ruled that land
It was ours
And it was whatever we told it to be