I have many memories of growing up in Marion, Indiana on our small ten-acre farm. We had a small creek that ran through our property. There was a spot were we could swim. There were spots where we could fish. There were spots that froze in the winter and we could ice skate.

My mom worked at the Jonesboro Public Library and after school my sisters and I would go there and hang out. I found corners where I could sit and read. I could spend hours looking at all of the books, imagining that someday perhaps I’d have a book there as well.

There were boys from school that I spent time with and this story of keeping watch for them is mostly true, as much as I can remember from so long ago. Putting the penny on the tracks also happened, though not that same day, I don’t think. But maybe.

Before I started writing today I read the poem “A Walk Along the Old Tracks” by Robert Kinsely as well as the poem “Woof, This Heat” by Kate Partridge.

Partridge’s poem gave me the thought to write something very personal and try to find range within the narrative, which I think that I did here. Kinsey’s poem did this but also had me thinking about train tracks.

The featured photo here was taken from the front seat of an “autobus” in Florence while my wife and I took a ride to Fiesole for a hike. I was taken with the scratches that cut through the words here.

My conversation with ChatGPT this morning ended with her giving me a prompt for the WordPress AI based on the poem:

A black-and-white image evoking childhood mischief and memory. A small-town corner store at dusk, a faint fluorescent glow in the window. In the distance, railroad tracks curve into the horizon. A weathered guardrail runs along a gravel slope. The mood is nostalgic, a little tense, a little proud—like boys on the edge of trouble, not quite lost, but not quite safe.

Let’s see what we get:

Nice. On the nose, of course, but the refinement of just using the poem gets this closer to the overall feeling of the poem.

I’m curious now what my normal method produces:

Creepy–especially the headless man behind the boys (who look a bit like quintuplets).