The Playground is Burning

Sage Ravenwood

source: WBGN—photo credit: Anthony Moffet Jr.

BINGHAMTON, NY: Early in the morning on June 1, 2020, someone set fire to the OurSpace Playground in Recreation Park.

There is a lot of history tied into the Recreation Park playground, but an absence of understanding about the kind of pain that drove the urge to burn it to the ground. They're already collecting funds to replace the park. This town is far too quick to replace a playground before considering the human side of what brought this about. The mayor is even downplaying the protest as if it didn't happen. You can’t diminish the humanity in such acts.

The Playground is Burning

It took six nights before
the riots reached my neighborhood
Eyes glued to the tv/online
Pain and anguish real/enough
Not my story     different skin
Yet indigenous know this war
One lone park in the middle of a city
Majestic Oak and Pine decades old
Generations riding ingrained history
On the backs of carousel horses
School children hand over-hand
Monkey bar     Gauntlet climbing to
Reach the slide into dirt bottom
Swings to carry a chained body
into a welkin cumulus sea
The playground is burning
Sawdust fueled anarchy
We will build again and again
Char the old to cinder ash
Protesters foretell another
Generation still rising
Give them a voice sown
From the ashes of playground

Sage Ravenwood is a deaf Cherokee woman residing in upstate NY with her two rescue dogs, Bjarki and Yazhi, and her one-eyed cat Max. She is an outspoken advocate against animal cruelty and domestic violence. Her work can be found in Glass Poetry - Poets Resist, The Temz Review, and Contrary. She also has work forthcoming, Sundress Press anthology - The Familiar Wild: On Dogs and Poetry. @SageRavenwood