Cellar Hole

By Robert Demaree
 

It’s where we go to walk in summer,
My grandsons and I,
The cellar hole down the lane from camp,
Well back from our New Hampshire pond.
Granite rocks set in the moist earth
Outline where a room had been.
I point out an oak tree
Growing in the middle, five feet around.
First-graders, they wonder why
I thought this worth their looking:
Young lives headed forward,
Others given up on, long ago.
 

Robert Demaree is a retired school administrator with ties to North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire. The author of a history of Greensboro Day School and a collection of poems called New Hampshire Pond, he has had over 200 poems published or accepted by 70 periodicals, including Aethlon, Cold Mountain Review, Louisville Review, Mobius, Offerings, and Paris/Atlantic.