The Giant Slide

Beside the highway, the Giant Slide with its rusty undulations lifts out of the weeds. It hasn’t been used for a generation. The ticket booth tilts to that side where the nickels shifted over the years. A chain link fence keeps out the children and drunks. Blue morning glories climb halfway up the stairs, bright clusters of laughter. Call it a passing fancy, this slide that nobody slides down now. Those screams have all gone east on a wind that will never stop blowing down from the Rockies and over the plains, where things catch on for a little while, bright leaves in a fence, and then are gone.