[Osage, Iowa]

I always liked summer best.

It meant week-long stays at

Grandma’s

with trips to the

old fashioned soda fountain

and never ending

bike rides among

Iowa cornfields

and endless indulgence

in homemade baked goods

and Spring Park

and The Barney Park

and rides in Grandpa’s Plane

__

watching Andy Griffith

and Leave it to Beaver on TV Land

wandering the small town streets

so different from my suburban backyard

feeling so at home in

my childhood home away from home.

— — —

It’s been a long time since I last published any poetry on the blog. However, I’ve been doing a lot of creative writing in my Language Arts Methods class for grad school, and I thought I’d share this poem I wrote during class about an important place from my childhood that I know well.

This piece was inspired by and draws its overall structure from Nikki Giovanni’s poem, “Knoxville, Tennessee”.