Small Town South Dakota

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Believe it or not, this was our main street, two blocks long!

Still Life With A Small Town Girl

For many years when I was small and far into my teens,
my summer days were filled with little else than magazines
and books and all the other things a girl in a small town
brings into her summers just to make the days less brown.

Day after day of reading soon led to dreaming, and
my shade beneath the cherry tree became a foreign land.
I did not know the name of it, but in this foreign place
the people did such lovely things. They kept a faster pace.

There were many things to see and people who liked doing—
circuses and carnivals, badminton and horse-shoeing,
imaginings and plays and travels. People who liked dancing.
Instead of trudging down the street, these people would be prancing.

I dreamed such dreams of bigger towns, and far-away towns, too.
All summer, I lay in the grass, dreaming what I’d do
when I was so much older and could go out on my own.
I’d wander off into the world. Explore the great unknown.

Now six decades later, I have done it all—
so many of those things I yearned to do when I was small.
I’ve been to places far and wide—Africa and Peru.
In England, France, Australia—I found so much to do.

Plays and concerts, dances, films, museums, garden walks.
Lectures, movies, workshops, classes, roundtables and talks.
Tours and treks and trips and sorties—guided meditations.
Somehow life seemed fuller packed with exotic vacations.

But now that I am seventy-six, I’d appreciate
if all this activity would finally abate.
I dream of slower days that I’d spend dreaming in the shade
where all my memories of days spent doing would just fade

into the past and leave me to dream here in this place,
swinging in my hammock, at a slower pace.
Leaving my activity to stream from head to pen,
filling up the page with all the places I have been.

Thus making sense of why I had to go and go,
speeding up the days that back then seemed to me so slow.
I guess I had to travel to find others of my kind
to teach me that life’s riches are mainly in the mind!

 

For dVerse Poets, we are to write a poem about a city. If you’d like to see more photos of my small town and environs, go HERE. And you can see how others responded to the prompt HERE.

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About lifelessons

My blog, which started out to be about overcoming grief, quickly grew into a blog about celebrating life. I post daily: poems, photographs, essays or stories. I've lived in countries all around the globe but have finally come to rest in Mexico, where I've lived since 2001. My books may be found on Amazon in Kindle and print format, my art in local Ajijic galleries. Hope to see you at my blog.

36 thoughts on “Small Town South Dakota”

    1. lifelessons's avatarlifelessons Post author

      I agree. I thought I’d join in on the meeting on Sunday but can’t figure out how. Is it a Skype group phonecall so I need to put money into my Skype phone? I live in Mexico..

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        1. lifelessons's avatarlifelessons Post author

          I did have it down for the correct day, but my calendar last year had Sunday as the last day of the week and my new one has Saturday as last so I looked and my mind told me it was Sunday. How do I get the link? On the usual dVerse site? Just click on it?

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  4. Unknown's avatarAnonymous

    Im with you now. I love the slow pace now that I’m older. But we’ve been snow and ice bound. It’s getting a bit lonely but we have that good Wyoming snowbound patience. Cool words , as usual. You really did fly to your dreams.

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  6. Lisa or Li's avatarmsjadeli

    Yipes that’s a dinky town. Books carried me out of the hell of my childhood, and the internet expanded my vista. My actual traveling hasn’t been extensive, but it has been enough to show me that no matter the geography, people are people.

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          1. Martha Kennedy's avatarMartha Kennedy

            A small town east of San Diego, Descanso. I’d just retired from teaching at San Diego State.

            I was in China from 1982 to 1983, teaching English at a teacher’s university in Guangzhou. I taught literature to seniors and grad students. ❤

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  11. Rob Kistner's avatarRob Kistner

    Day after day of reading soon led to dreaming, and
    my shade beneath the cherry tree became a foreign land… 🙂✌🏼🫶🏼

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  12. ben Alexander's avatarben Alexander

    Judy, the recounting of a well-lived life, filled with travels and experiences is inspiring; and your concluding lines about appreciating a slower pace and finding richness in the mind beautifully encapsulate the wisdom gained through the years. Thank you for sharing this heartfelt piece.

    ~David

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  14. Yvonne Osborne's avatarYvonne Osborne

    Beautiful with a lilting, sing-song rhythm. Growing up on a farm, I felt much of those yearnings and the best way to travel was through books. I got out of the country (not as much as you) but find myself back home, as you say, where things are slower and that’s okay.

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  16. Mama Cormier's avatarMama Cormier

    I lived in the big city but felt trapped in our small apartment and couldn’t wait to leave. The best thing I ever did was move out and go to school in a different town. After year one I moved to Germany to work for the summer and was pretty lonely. I had a few hours off on Sundays and would take bus excursions to neighbouring towns and villages. In the fall I went back to university, met my husband and 2 1/2 years later we were married. We scrimped and saved to buy a house (unheard of now) and a year later we started our family. The best thing we did was build a cottage so that the kids and I had a place to spend our summers. We put travelling on hold till all the kids left the nest. Regrets?….not really but travelling at our age can be challenging. We’ve never been resort travellers.

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