Catherine Owen
On Becoming Obsessed by Vintage Fisher Price Toys During Quarantine
Their smiles became too complex by the 80s, all rubicund and gloss.
The 70s were when, wooden-bodied stumps, their grins just simple lines,
They were evidence of innocence, that it existed once, a purity of curve.
As a child, I never played with toys, tome-laden, but now, in mid-life,
A strange nostalgia pervades for those hours I might have known, shifting
Little Billy from helicopter to plane, Mother Susan from car to house.
I mostly liked the bits: toilet lid, the stove’s precision-hinged door and miniscule
Burners, the elevators you could crank in hospital and garage that went ding ding
Ding regardless of direction. These served my hunger for repetition, perfection,
A controllable world - never games or social acts but small revisions of space and time.
Maybe now it’s just the same, all those plastic tableaus in primary hues contained,
Changeable, but never once tragic - Sally always sports those tiny limbs of braids,
The baby slips from cradle to highchair to bed; the farmer herds his blind cows;
The firefighter forever seems serene in this eternal land beyond flames.
Their smiles became too complex by the 80s, all rubicund and gloss.
The 70s were when, wooden-bodied stumps, their grins just simple lines,
They were evidence of innocence, that it existed once, a purity of curve.
As a child, I never played with toys, tome-laden, but now, in mid-life,
A strange nostalgia pervades for those hours I might have known, shifting
Little Billy from helicopter to plane, Mother Susan from car to house.
I mostly liked the bits: toilet lid, the stove’s precision-hinged door and miniscule
Burners, the elevators you could crank in hospital and garage that went ding ding
Ding regardless of direction. These served my hunger for repetition, perfection,
A controllable world - never games or social acts but small revisions of space and time.
Maybe now it’s just the same, all those plastic tableaus in primary hues contained,
Changeable, but never once tragic - Sally always sports those tiny limbs of braids,
The baby slips from cradle to highchair to bed; the farmer herds his blind cows;
The firefighter forever seems serene in this eternal land beyond flames.
Catherine Owen is the author of fifteen collections of poetry and prose. Her latest book of poems is called Riven (ECW, 2020). She lives in a 1905 home now crammed with Fisher Price sets.