Down by the creek
Where the salamanders creep
And the water spiders all tip-toe
Squats a boy on a log
Staring hard at the frog
That he caught just a moment ago.
Little toes take a dip
Where the bees take a sip—
Near the edge, where the flowers bloom—
And the bob of the curls
On that pigtailed girl
Match the hum of her rhythmic tune.
Farther up, where the stream
Crinkles on in a gleam
Over silt beds of slithering sleep
Bends a teen stripped of socks
Lifting hard at a rock
For the dam that he’s made in the deep.
On a boulderous ledge
In the shade of a hedge
Kneels a third boy in keen concentration
As he builds and he plans
Stony pyres with his hands
For the joy of a calm contemplation.
On the bank I’m alone,
With a sigh and a groan
For the grief and the pain of our nation,
But around I behold
The way beauty unfolds
In the breath, in the beat, of creation.
After receiving her English degree, Rachel and her husband, Mick, moved to Spain and spent the next dozen years in cross-cultural ministry. When family circumstances brought them back to North Carolina and the family greenhouse business, a return to literature brought her into a new season of writing: both poetry and the beginnings of a novel.
This poem is from Rachel’s book Beyond Chittering Cottage: Poems of Place, a collection born out of the close, everyday observation of the world outside her back door. Beyond Chittering Cottage is currently available for preorder from Bandersnatch Books.
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Hi! I am also a poet and thought your poem was lovely. I actually found it by googling “stories about play therapy” since I’m doing a presentation about the subject for a class. I wanted to see if there were any stories about play therapy still in modern times. Is your poem about the practices of play therapy or is it about something completely different? I love the nature in the poem. It felt like I was taken to a scene of beautiful nature and life.