Grade Seven Social Studies Unit
by Patricia Young
The merry-go-round in the back yard
was once a bedstead my father took apart
then welded back together into a whirring
contraption I rode through a season.
On long afternoons it spun like a pinwheel
among blossoming trees, apple and pear.
He built it as he built everything else
in those years, out of scrap metal and bits
of plywood—swing set, picnic table, tree fort.
When I think of that merry-go-round I think of
Mesopotamia’s golden sands and lunar calendar.
I think: plow, sailboat, waterclock, stylus.
When I was twelve I lay on my back looking up
at the turning world and imagined I was rocking
in the cradle of civilization. It must have grown
dark, I must have gone in for dinner, but when
I think of that spring I think of my father
who died too young. I think of an iron bedstead
spinning between two rivers, Tigris and Euphrates,
the fertile delta running between.
Patricia Young’s eleventh collection of poetry Night-Eater was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Award in 2013.