'Go play'

“Outside is the failure to stay in touch
or, really, to ever be in touch. I didn't
ever know them (my neighbors) well.
In winter you are handed a white tray
with a few tiny rock walls, short lines drawn with a ruler,
an indent for where a cellar hole could be
a hyperlink to once go once more to the lake
and told to go at it, go play.’’

From “Deconstructing New England,’’ by Alexandria Peary, a New Hampshire-based poet who grew up in Maine