"The Jungle"

2006-02-23T00:44:00.000-08:00

We call it “The Jungle”
Richland, Washington
My cousins’ back yard
A dessert for dirt bikes

The journey is sand
But the trail is dust
Sticks to your pants
Follow the green
Where the trees leave open space
Enter “The Jungle”
Disappear…

This adventure has a purpose
We are hunters
And we want “The Jungle’s” treasure

It always grows dark
Until we meet the cat-tails
We need our flashlights
To jump across the algae-covered water
It’s quiet
Something’s out there

We follow the still river
But we can’t see it
The grass is too high
And Katie steps in the muck
We stumble over mounds of wild
And search
Something’s out there

The cat-tails
They are tall and see us
They smack us in the face
We catch them with our flashlights
Their necks reach away
But we cut them down
With our hands
And pile them in our shirts

Our treasure from “The Jungle”
Our glorious prize!
We find our way back and jump
Almost 4 feet across the water
And we travel back across the dessert

Home.
We open our cat-tails in the grass field
Twist open the fuzz inside
And dance as the wind lifts its life into the air
We rejoice in the swirl of cat-tail snow
And get it stuck in our nostrils

My Poetry

"The Jungle"