by Susan Fox
In the wide open play fields of Knott's, Mother,
you and I
on the merry-go-round
were entertained on free days,
amid the rise and fall of warm sound.
I -- held to the rowing motion
of a concrete horse --
rode our stone tragedy
in the gritty music of my untried childhood.
 |
| Hungry seals wetting our dresses |
Little things absorbed us:
hungry seals wetting our dresses,
a red devil still cranking up the volcano years --
wooden satyr, my first love,
you were buried on the Farm
by bigger buildings,
but remembered by the Child's heart.
 |
| This is the actual red devil who kept the lava flowing down the volcano! |
The Child ran around these playfields,
skipped and fed the ducks;
her stomach turned
in the planes and angles
of a haunted shack.
The Child
searched the past for gold,
was lost
from her mother's track
and died in a shoot-out
at Knott's Berry Farm.
In the wide open fields of Knott's
we rode the world,
got off and then grew up.
Going back alone, Mother,
I find we are dead and gone,
married into other lives.
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| Volcano erupted repeatedly thanks to the action of the red devil cranking up the "volcano years." This was fascinating to me at a very young age. |
