Childhood Snapshots

            I spent a lot of time on Sunday working on bumping up some of the poems for my final project. Most of the time I tried to improve the rhymes and the images in my autobiographical poem, “Out on the Fields of Youth”. I also worked on memorizing the chords and words to “Un Canadien Errant” and to my translation, “The Lost Canadian”.

Out on the Fields of Youth

On the fields of youth the bravest hero

challenged Satan to a fight to the death.

As he stood with legs apart, clenching fists

the Devil rose from the frozen furrows.

The boy’s battle cry rode out on steamy breath,

then he let Lucy have it with a flying kick.

He spun, he rolled, he dodged the sharpened tail,

and gave Old Nick his Sunday punch.

They battled furiously, tooth and nail

and never gave up

until it was time to go in for lunch.

A setting of jewels in the woods by the field

was the rock pile that grew more every spring,

harvested by dad off the fertile land

from stones that each winter the earth would yield,

then picked and hauled to make way for the seed.

While my father sowed I’d sit on that island

on a chair shaped rock that was quartz encrusted

and sparkled in the sun.

That stone mound was crowned with parts, old and rusted

of harrow and combine,

but for me they were spaceships, war tanks and ray guns.

At the sunset end of our property

was the lazy zipper between two frontiers,

the other flank of which was the U.S.

and across a cleared strip that stretched endlessly

was the farm of our American neighbour,

Dickie White, whose spuds did better business.

They’d park their tractors on the edge of each land

and chat over the boundary

where between them a stone would stand

with carving on opposite halves

showing the handle of either patrie.

I was dragged to church by a clip-on lead

for my constricting date with the godhead,

but after that we’d resurrect at Grammy’s

who smelled of mothballs and the elderly,

but her home of her heavenly brown bread

and of her orange wheel of cheddar cheese.

Dad and she would sometimes gab in Danish

to keep us from being smart

to the worldly things that they were saying

though neither one of them

had ever set foot in old Denmark.

Saving pop empties to buy fresh comic books

that drew me beyond to exotic worlds

where the rulings of grownups need not apply

for those who could shatter walls with a red-beamed look;

where the super power to vex, wielded by girls

was melted away by the flair to fly,

swing, jump, swim or climb fast, high, wide and deep,

or to shift dimensions

where mind could unravel reality

and tame its chaos

so as to break free from pubescent tensions.

On weekends with my sister and mother

playing games like 45s, Charlemagne,

rummy, go fish, cribbage, hearts or war

while gobbling popcorn with salt and butter,

fudge or some other homemade confection.

While Dad was out doing some extra chore,

never having fun with my sister or me.

Mom might share an adventure

such as almost drowning at Old Orchard Beach

or maybe give us a shock

with the newsflash that Dad was a dancer.

On Christmas mornings I descended early

but most gifts couldn’t be opened because

our parents wanted to be there to see it,

but under our always magnificent tree

were unwrapped presents from Santa Clause,

though I’d ceased to think him real in secret

but wanted my parents to still believe

so they’d stay generous.

On the one day that I felt somewhat loved

by my father,

the razor strap was not swung on Christmas.

Almost every summer those New England trips

to Mom’s siblings in Maine, Mass. and New Hampshire

and the uncles’ cabins where I learned to swim.

But my mother’s clan had only grown-up kids

since she was the second youngest sister

so I never felt close to her close kin

and had the feeling they found me boring.

But I savoured the drive,

the journey pastime of forging stories

of how the burgs got named

and the Howard Johnson’s on route 95.

Pleasant recollections of make-believe wars

when no one said that we could not pretend

to kill each other with guns and grenades.

Potato battles from the barn’s hay forts,

snowball frays from winter’s start to its end,

or summer leas where we’d go, then break

off chunks of blue cow salt to suck upon,

between sour apple bites.

The older boys teaching me dirty songs

I didn’t understand

when I sang them and made my mother cry.

.

Rescuing pleasures of masturbation

with Annette Funicello on my mind

and to see her visage was all I needed

for sexual flight simulation

that hasn’t stopped informing me how to fly,

though the itch now needs more than a face to feed it.

I copied down verses of every song.

Melodic poetry

with words of tuning in and turning on

that said, “There’s more to me!”

and blew the breeze that helped me sail away.

I don’t miss the past when I reminisce.

Every experience is part of me,

creating and forging who I’ve become.

Regret is a poorly bred homesickness

and clinging to “then” would be gluttony.

Besides, time might well be an illusion

and there may be little to space withal.

All of us are lessons learned.

Thankfully there’s sure as hell no devil

nor a magic Santa Clause

but there’s still opulence of romance to be earned.