Out Back On 5146 Cisne

I’m From Out Back

Out back, behind my house was a safe place,

secured by general fear of my father

and “mines” laid by my dog Blue.

Those are the years we had monster tomato plants.

Lilac shrubs hold much promise,

Blooming in vibrant purple, emitting the smell of heaven itself,

Lilacs are also a tease, blooming only in May,

They taunt little boys who wish to keep their mothers amply supplied

with fragrant blooms stuffed into every household water glass.

Out back is where my dad took me to play catch,

pitching fastballs with all his might at my trembling mitt,

never catching on to my desire to be inside with the brothers Grimm.

Later, when he hurt his back and I took over mowing the grass,

I felt like I was becoming the man of the house.

Out back is where I first learned about creatures.

I ran after squirrels and spotted blue jays and robins, cardinals and blackbirds.

Once I even saw an oriole; it was in the mouth of our cat, Tom.

I dug earthworms, pinched ants, poked at garden spiders and squashed daddy longlegs.

Once, a stray female dog in heat came around Old Blue,

but that is a different story.

After I grew up and gained a family of our own, I still occasionally visited out back,

hanging around the two oak pillars in the middle of the yard

until I could catch a whiff of my childhood.

After a few years, the oak trees died and dad hired some men to cut them down;

it marked the beginning of an end.

Eventually, the shrubs out back ran their course and died out;

my brother Mike claims that they died because Old Blue chewed them too much.

With the oaks and lilacs gone, and Old Blue buried out back,

the smell of my childhood was practically gone.

Not so long ago,

I heard my own children talking about their childhood,

how they used to play out back when we lived on Mallory Street.

They talked about their dog Murphy, of digging in the sand, climbing on the garage,

eating mulberries and smelling the tomato vines in the hot sun.

I knew then my own experiences were seeds,

which died out back in my life, to spring up again in theirs.