Alliteration Contest Poems: Untidy and Simple, Eric Colburn

Eric Colburn's poetry has appeared in Appalachia, Blue Unicorn, THINK Journal, and elsewhere. He lives with his family in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Untidy and Simple


The vacant lots and leafstrewn alleyways
we used to smuggle our small bodies through
are nearly gone by now, filled in with new
immurements, marked and massed cement, the maze
of walls and rules, of laws and loss, that cage
us here. What havens have we hurried to,
so desperate to escape the past? If you
have taken steps toward brighter, newer days,
may you yet find your freedom in the wild-
ness of the world–while wildness still exists…
Some leaves still strew the path. Not every lot
has been surveyed, surmised, surcharged. Some child,
today, now tiptoes toward some shadowed bliss,
now teases out the tightly tangled knot.

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