Fishing in Sunriver - A Poem

When I was six years old, we moved to Central Oregon. I know Disneyland claims to be "the happiest place on earth," but their marketing team has clearly never been to Sunriver. We lived there for about four years, maybe five. I have so many memories of being a kid there. What a place to grow up! Plenty of wilderness to explore, 33.5 miles of bike paths, and on and on. I remember standing on 5-foot high snow piles from the plows as we waited for the school bus in winter. I remember running through the woods in the summer. It was the kind of magical childhood you see in movies.

One place we used to go from time to time was the marina, a nice spot for a family of five to go fishing and swim a little. It seemed like a good subject for a poem:

My First Bible

There are lots of children’s Bibles out there. Some of them are basically large picture books of key Bible stories. Others are more complete, but in kid-friendly language. Then there are plain old ordinary Bibles, with some illustrations. I had the latter.

Long before I could read, I had my illustrated King James Bible. My brothers each had one, too, but theirs had built-in zippers to keep the book closed when not in use. I was very jealous. I still don’t know why theirs had zippers and mine didn’t. Maybe there were only two of the zippered Bibles at the store when my parents bought them. Maybe I was too little to use a zipper. No matter. I eventually decided mine was better because it was easier to flip the pages without that extra cloth in the way.