And the chapped sun-baked tire
swung on the aged and frail rope attached to the most outright branch
of the sheltersome oak tree by the carved up picnic bench.
Children fought for such a throne on warm summer days,
Not many cared for clawing and snatching in attaining it,
But it was a necessary fight in those days.
Once they sat in their highest place and swung to the skies,
All they could see was the wind-ridden flow of treetops
rustling and swaying, creating nature’s static,
This why they fought,
This is why only the battered
and bruised cooled their cuts with forest breeze.
It broke one day,
after being a shelter in storming youth,
Charles Ferger snapped the rope
on a smooth swing to reach the sky.
They knew the clock was counting down
and no one could see how much time was left,
but they still hated Charles for being the one it broke on.
It wasn’t his fault, and they knew it,
but they had to blame someone.
No one ventured to it for the first few weeks,
The sight of it only reopened healing wounds.
At a certain point, years later, after the kids
had gone to high school, it was fixed.
No one knew who fixed it or when,
since the kids still went out there once in a while
to drink some nights and have campfires,
but they were glad it was fixed,
then news of the resurrection spread.
And on one MLK day,
no one remembers which,
they had a bonfire and swung as high as they could
to christen it back to its precious worn state once more,
fighting over it with the intentional caution they
used to use when wrestling for the uninhibited freedom
that in lay dormant in the crusty black tire swing.