As I walk by woods this morning,
memories of old woods well up from
when I was a kid – the little forest
on the edge of neighborhood
where we played out summer dramas.

The operative game was “War.”
We re-enacted our dads’ battles
with little more than a long stick,
a real toy gun or two,
and bursting imagination.

Attack and counterattack,
maneuver and ambush,
stopping every so often for rations –
wild blackberries from prickly bushes.
We ate till they purpled our fingers.

The beauty of it was,
when struck by phantom bullets,
we’d lie on the ground for a moment or two.
And then, as if some lifeforce
seeped into us through the loamy soil,
we would jump up, shouting, “New man!”,
resurrected, ready to fight for democracy.
We were all arms and legs then,
our only casualties
the intermittent bruised elbow,
the occasional skinned knee.

As light sifted low, picketing through the trees,
we’d emerge for dinner,
tired and dirty, mostly unscathed.
But we left the magic of the woods behind
along with those friendships.

What became of those boys?
Did anyone die in Nam?
Or were they shot down by cancer?
Do they play games with their children,
even grandchildren,
on football-field lawns?
We should have made a pledge,
a tontine to immortality,
perhaps with blackberry wine.

I imagine now the trees have gone
for a forest of condos.
I’d like to think the old magic
still comes from the earth
like some ancient burial ground –
it bubbles up through cracks in the concrete slabs
and spreads into the carpet
where kids recline before the TV
in their family rooms.

It would keep them safe and immortal,
at least for a while.


[First published in Millennium Portals, an anthology of New Jersey poets by the Camdon County Cultural and Heritage Commission, Fall 2001.]

10/04/2001

Posted on 10/04/2001
Copyright © 2025 Bruce W Niedt