Sunnyslope Love

Sunnyslope walls of knotty pine

Little red house full of love divine

Always bursting at the seams

With leaves and trees and summer breeze

Brightest eyes and lightest wings

Jeans with rips and skinned up knees

Bittersweet water grows and flows

Down the center of the football rows

Hopscotch, chalk and popsicle sticks

Sappy woods of fir and twigs

Longest days and deepest nights

Climbing to the highest heights

Lost treasures, adventures untold

Toys found, traded and sold

Butting heads, dares and fears

Wrestling, fighting, smiles and tears

Bicycles flying, speeding racing

Learning and growing, always chasing

Screened in back porch and bricks behold

Cool stone slabs, our hearts would hold

Neverland sweet, Summerland bright

Wonderland wild and Childhood right

The big tree stands in his corner alone

Offers a hideout, a big hidden home

The sky was bigger, grass taller

Concrete harder and worries smaller

The dust and dirt between our toes

Were rings and diamonds, everyone knows

The story scars, our glory stars

In the summer sky above our home

The leaf piles deep and fireflies light

The moon in our eyes, always bright

The roof was hot and burned your feet

those feet that ran along the street

Slap em down hard, run as fast as you can

Blood and cuts don’t matter, we ran and ran

Underneath bushes and up in the trees

The wind always whispered, to you and to me

Mint green berries and Indian clay

The warriors would live to the end of the day

Walnut warpaint, living on the path

For this we were punished with a bath

We’d all go meet at the broken fence

And talk about what had happened since

We had played the very night before

Till mothers called us through the door

In mornings Tarzan calls would ring

Throughout the yards the kids would sing

Leaping the fence lines over the sand

Our world stretches on, your land is our land

Night or day, hot or cold

You’d find lost boys always digging for gold

Sailing on ships of brown and green

Trees are boats if your eyes can see

Plywood made our tree house floor

No walls or ceiling, no front door

The metal ladder led to the throne

Of open freedom, pure windblown

Kings and queens, servants and slaves

Wendy and Peter and Cherokee braves

Cowboys and Indians, fighting and war

Underground tunnels of cap guns galore

Jumping right down from the highest tree

Broken bones and scrapes but you’re still the king

Catching rain water falls in pots

Savoring rain when the ground was hot

Black diamonds found in  gravel gray

Living in the ditch till the end of the day

With stars in our eyes and flowers in our hair

We’d fly till we’re breathless, without a care

Roasted peanuts and fireman’s spray

Doused us at the bike parade

Before the iris would awake

We’d catch it in the ditch and take

The smooth and cool on your lips

Heaven painted purple drips

Following wood down the ditch of a river

When the sky overflowed and we’d laugh and shiver

Plotting to catch those birds of gold

With blue wooden boxes that would never hold

Hound dogs and snow dogs roaming the block

While our neighborhood family together would walk

Little runaways with bandannas of food

Never got far, always back by noon

Sunlight, stardust moon gleaming night

Barefoot German spotlight flight

Cops and robbers, hide and seek

Trap door tree house down the street

A gazebo, a castle it’s all the same

Gumballs and tire swings, much more than a game

Water balloons and painted faces

Friendship bread and wheel barrow races

On the side yard tree we’d walk the line

We’d all get on and we’d all fit fine

Milk glass, China glass tornado ruins and bone

Another world, another place we’d been carefully shown

We’d sit in the grass and learn and listen

In our history class as the sun would glisten

Reading of knights and Egyptian lands

Presidents, paintings and sign language hands

Under the trees with our sisters and brothers

And so many mothers, loving each other

We’d act out stories , pirates turtles and birds

Peterkin papers and angelic words

Surfing the pavement in red wagon fly

Only grabbing our helmets if cops would come by

Our mailman called Cowboy, our ice cream man friend

We never imagined the story would end

Pit bulls and pistols and fireman dads

Crime scenes and fires were the latest fads

Our carpet was violets, of purple and blue

Together we live and together we grew

On Sunnyslope road were these tales of gold,

There is no such thing as growing old