Animated illustration by Cecil Lu
The year was 1969. I was ten
And carried a spiral notebook everywhere I went,
from the corner store to the diamond,
The whack of the bat, the way it connected
With the ball was my background, crackling,
Punctuation noise. Summers were always boiling,
A sloppy concoction of grass and sweat. Pages
Wilted, curled up in the corners like the edges
Of Mikey’s mouth, a built-in sneer.
In the 60s, everything was treated like a revelation:
Presidential transgressions, the moon landing.
UFOs seemed real, pin pricks of light that spoke
Of neighboring galaxies. Lost land.
Light years in between other points of origins
And what we like to call home.
Frances Du is a poet and photographer based in Toronto, Ontario. Her work has been published in the Hart House Review, Ricepaper Magazine, and The Literary Review of Canada. She is currently working on her first book of poems, PORTRAITS. You can connect with her @frannywrites.
Animated illustration by Cecil Lu.