Two Dead Penguins and an Iron Lung

On the square, tucked away beside the willow tree, the chalked outlines of a hopscotch game. All afternoon the skipping - more like dancing - had gone on, the children's numbers slowly swelling amid much laughter. All this between the showers, which as you might imagine, only magnified the children's sense of fun.

It is after one such shower that perhaps the smallest girl of all successfully regains her pebble and dances back, but fails to stop, dances on in fact, as though in celebration, as though to do a lap of honour round the square. In fact, once in the open, unobstructed area, she stops, produces a few sticks of chalk from her coat pocket, stoops down and begins to draw on the grey stones - what? - her own, private hopscotch court? If so, a hopscotch court out of this world. Overblown. A hopscotch court for giants, perhaps. Soon it becomes clear that this new figure is voracious, a land grabbing monster that has designs on the whole square. And as it grows,it takes on aspects of a landscape - a rather surrealistic landscape, home to denizens and features in need of some interpretation.

Where yesterday the empty grey 
of paving stones, today
two dead penguins and an iron lung. 
Newly chalked, a river flows uphill -
to run along the elevated section by the shops, 
and tumble down a flight of stone cold concrete steps.
It finds its end in its beginning - the penguin lake.
A ship of flowers descends the cataract.

From out the iron lung, the pink head of a mouse.
He's looking round to see what's what. 
Look closer, though, you'll see it's not continuous 
with what's inside! Decapitated patient in a bygone lung... 
End of!

Sure, there are figures here I can't decode - the iron lung, for instance - and the whole ensemble seems something more organic than a simple hopscotch matrix. An environment in which strange artefacts and creatures might take form - are taking form. Are having their mysterious geneses.

A mobile phone with painted face and paper skirt
is propped against the fence. In front of her
a faded flower and three rose petals ring a stone,
while just above the waterfall, dangerously close,
a tiny plastic baby on a matchbox raft.

She skips back to the game she left. The little girl invites her former playmates to her new homeland, though they are having none of it. They laugh and turn back to their game. But by tomorrow they will be victims of her web, caught up in a game whose rules and object are too complicated and involved, far too sophisticated for the likes of me.

Then will I be as I am now, a tourist in a land I cannot grasp. 
I see a mix of portents, charms and signs 
as in the world I know. They share 
the same two mysteries, my world and this: Creation how & why.
First there was not, and then there was; 
a magic wand scenario: a wave, 
a flash, and all is changed the way an island suddenly appears 
at sea, crop circles on the land or new stars in the sky. 
At least we know what those things are, or were, 
but this! Is this a game for children or much more?
Is this enchanted place for all? 

................................................................................ This poem was written for the dVerse Poets prompt - more than a prompt, a mastercless - by Anna Montgomery on Prose Poetry. Do go over and read the piece for yourself.

Some of you may have had a feeling of Déjà Vu reading this. I did post a version (without prose) back in February. (Here ) I was dissatisfied with it. Reading Anna's post it struck me that a prose/poetry version might hold some hope of salvation for it.