Growing up there
in the playful summers
of my childhood,
bliss for all
except for McCarthy victims-
Joe McCarthy, fiddling on D.C.
maiming innocent minds,
a bogus brainwasher
existing in the conformity of the fifties.
But at the Lake,
a sweet waterlilly of youth,
floating on a Monet background
residing in a house
Ah! a house-
which could open any imagination
into a history of treasures...
it was earthen delight.
On the large front lawn
there were fluttering, ruby robins,
I lusted to catch them
as they flitted over lime green grass,
the lake a calm mirage.
Peace was missing elsewhere
like Korea, a faraway reality
which one day I sensed
through the quiet sobs
of an Aunt, after she caught a
splinter in her foot.
(It was a frozen. fragile moment
an omen of adversity).
I realized then, that the birds
are seldom caught,
the house could flare up
in an instant of terror,
a bleak nightmare of thunder.
World Peace is forever missing
a forgotten life jacket
forsaken, disintegrated,
strewn away in the boat house
under a child's whimper.