August 2020
Bio Note: I live in northeastern Kentucky, where I edit Shiela-Na-Gig online and Sheila-Na-Gig
Editions. Across the river in Ohio, I am a professor of English for a branch campus of Ohio University, teaching
American Literature, composition, and creative writing.
Joy
The neighborhood kids
are going for the record:
the longest chalk hopscotch,
starting at 103 Meadowlark,
hop-skipping-jumping, winding
its way through our small patch
of Kentucky roadscape.
One square, one foot.
Two squares, two feet.
Each box a unique geometry,
depending on the writing skills
of its young maker, tumbles
up the middle of the asphalt
till some mom guides
the installation towards
the safety of our edged lawns.
At box 535 the oldest boy
begins to count by hundreds,
squares 600, 700, 800,
stretching beyond four houses,
rounding into the cul-de-sac,
past Friday’s recycling bins,
then up the street again,
flanked by pink happy-face hearts,
rainbow-tailed unicorns, blue cats,
purple flowers.
The project goes on for days,
easily beating the record –
heading back home with
over 1800 squares. The joy
is in the making. No one thinks
about Ripley’s rules or worries
about tire treads slowly taking up
colorful hues, the nighttime critters
nosing through the chalk-box,
or even, inevitably,
the sudden rain.
©2020 Hayley Mitchel Haugen
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the
author (email address above) to tell her or him. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual.
It is very important. -JL