Both kids took quite a bit of time and effort over theirs this year (Duncan's being thatched with red licorice whips and then further shingled with brown M&Ms. There has been a lot of damaging weather this year and you just can't be too careful in a time of climate change), and on the way home in the car ("MOM! Would you mind driving a little more carefully!") they commented on the less designed, less elegant approach of some fellow architects.
"Most of them end up looking like sheds more than houses!"
***************************
Gingerbread Shed
Four walls, flat roof
to make a lid—
built a bunker’s
all you did.Shape is lost in
gobs of frosting.
Your hands, and arms,
and neck
need washing.
That’s no house—
it’s a gingerbread shed
to store the tools
of a sugarhead:
hersheykisseslicoricelace--
is that a froot loop on your face?
gumdropsskittlescandycanes--your eyes say “Rush me to Insane.”
That’s no house—
it’s a gingerbread shed.
Now give me that
and go to bed.
Heidi Mordhorst 2012
DRAFT
Postscript: Duncan pronounces this "the best thing you've written in a long time. It rhymes and it tells the ideas in a way I can comprehend!" I guess my campaign in defense of sensitive free verse for children is not over.
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