The Giant Slide

Beside the highway, the Giant Slide
with its rusty undulations lifts
out of the weeds. It hasn’t been used 
for a generation. The ticket booth
tilts to that side where the nickels shifted 
over the years. A chain link fence keeps out 
the children and drunks. Blue morning glories 
climb halfway up the stairs, bright clusters 
of laughter. Call it a passing fancy,
this slide that nobody slides down now. 
Those screams have all gone east
on a wind that will never stop blowing 
down from the Rockies and over the plains, 
where things catch on for a little while, 
bright leaves in a fence, and then are gone.