“hide in the bushes,/imagine we’re soldiers on patrol,/evading the Krauts and the Japs.”
Back in the 50s and early 60s,
smalltown rural Pennsylvania,
kids could camp with their buddies
in somebody’s backyard, or even
the public park down by the creek.
Our parents never worried about us.
Pedophiles didn’t lurk in the bushes.
Nobody locked their doors.
There’d been only one murder
in Perkasie folks could remember.
Burglaries few, kidnappings never.
We would wander the streets
for the sheer excitement of being
afoot while the whole town slept,
the town’s one cop car easy enough
to avoid, hide in the bushes,
imagine we’re soldiers on patrol,
evading the Krauts and the Japs.
The sound of a dog barking,
maybe another, barking at cats,
barking at us or the moon.
The moon like a Cheshire cat,
or a face: the Man in the Moon.
The Milky Way. The Big Dipper.
How could we have known
what awaited us in the darkness
of future years, too young to even
imagine a future, let alone our own?
Once, we raided Old Man Bowen’s
garage, knowing he always kept
cookies and Cokes in his workshop
fridge, but we didn’t take them all.
W. D. Ehrhart has authored or edited a number of collections of poetry and prose, most recently Thank You for Your Service: Collected Poems and What We Can and Can’t Afford: Essays on Vietnam, Patriotism, and American Life, both from McFarland & Company, Inc. He holds a Ph.D. from University of Wales at Swansea and taught at The Haverford School in Pennsylvania from 2001 to 2019.
