No one remembered
who named the place
Gingerbread Land:
behind our house
up the hill
past the woods—
a deep ravine
fat with trees
gnarled together
since the onset of time.
At the bottom, a portal
to Earth’s core,
a boiling abyss hot as the Hell
we’d been warned of.

When bulldozers and excavators tore
out the trees, filled and leveled
the land until suitable to build on,
we fathomed it a vast desert
of smothering sandstorms.
From metal clamps
inside glazed culvert pipes
we hung while several pushed
to start our tumble,
eyes riveted
to wasp nests that swung
by slender strands,
tiny cells empty
for the moment.

-Karen George