TRENTON AIR FORCE BASE

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 I 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 I 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 on the tarmac

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 me and my brother

sis’ wouldn’t be along until 1965

occupying the second floor

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 Chris Sorrenti