Old Rosary Poem by Quinn Graw

Children ride the swings
sliding down the old red and blue slide
while others take a spin on the wheel go round.
Football goal posts
range way back into the field.
Empty wide fields to roam
running and playing games
the development ground
for creativity and imagination.
A backstop chain fence
for ball games
during recesses and physical education.
Many a sunny days were spent
monkey bars readily used as well.
Jumping onto one of these playing instruments
the children attached to like glue.
Two old buildings
often walking between the two of them
in a tunnel walled tin corridor.
For those were the days of the Old Rosary
to the library you walked downstairs
the lower grades worked upstairs until Grade five.
Then you moved into the bigger school
progressively your homeroom
moved from west to east
until the junior high years had come and gone.
Your childhood waned
moving on to the teen age
in the bowels of Paul Rowe High.
My age closes in to fifty
The memories become more selective and nifty.
Nostalgia for the good
partial amnesia for the bad.
Today the football posts have moved
in more ways than one.
The fields have been filled with new equipment
the buildings have been upgraded as new
the parking lot upgraded and paved.
Yet the gymnasium renews
a bit of the old into the new
as today one remembers the Old Rosary.