in winter 1965 and I was finally eight
we’d slide down the big hill behind our house
when there wasn’t an ice storm
and we could skate in the street
we really did!
Karen my first girlfriend
she threw me down on the ground
and kissed me and that was that
and me giggling over sticky donuts
that the baker delivered fresh to the houses
as bakers were prone to do in those days
and mom was the stay home kind
we drove her crazy sometimes
our noses running from the December air
and Santa Clause was real as
the Christmas special Rudolf The Red Nosed Reindeer
hosted by Burl Ives
and fighter jets scrambled to greet him
cookies and cola would be waiting on the table
to Nat King Cole’s Chestnuts roasting on an open fire
I was always too excited to sleep

that next summer
my friends and me playing hide n’ seek in the evergreens
though our parents had forbade us to go there
no reason given though years later we discovered
Rape was a concept we wouldn’t have understood
we helped some bigger boys build a house up in an oak tree
just down from the abandoned apple orchard
twenty feet high or so it seemed
once we were up there it was hard to come down
below some kids said they saw a U.F.O.
I looked up but couldn’t see anything
maybe someone else’s mind working overtime
or just a couple of Hercules walking on the wind

under the bluest skies I’ve ever seen the endless sun
a hundred and ten in the morning
we’d load up the car
take off to Lake Ontario for the day
Presqu'ile was so many people
the weeds kept some of them from going in
I’d run for the water but hated the shock of it
and small fish I’d never seen before except on television
would swim past my hand
asked my dad what was on the other side
though we couldn’t see the other side
he told me another country called the United States
I nodded though didn’t understand

above all else I remember the planes
two and four engine transports
T-33 jet trainers
at six o’clock in the morning
you could hear their engines growl from a mile away
my father’s hands were always dirty
even though he’d wash them thoroughly
just before supper
from spilling their guts in the hangars

but before all that there was Spring Street
in 1963 I hadn’t turned six yet
a century’s old house outside the base
divided into three apartments
my parents brother and me occupying the second floor
sis wouldn't be along till '65
it was the first time I saw a man staggering drunk
then not long after when lying in bed one night
not far off I heard a train’s wheels clackity-clack
turn into Indians chanting
smiling faces began appearing on the wall
then the lady in white came the next night
all aglow at the foot of my bed
her face a reflection of the smiles I’d seen
the night before
not long after I saw her again in Ottawa
just before my grandfather passed away
though now she wasn’t smiling
pulling open a scroll she pointed at it
as if telling me to read
but I was only five years old
and those kind of words were still beyond me

© 2005
Revised © 2018

2,420 hits as of April 2024

01/31/2005

Posted on 02/01/2005
Copyright © 2024 Chris Sorrenti