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11/11/08 - (2)
Once-upon-a-Time
Often, as a rather aggressively aging adult, I catch myself daydreaming, spacing out, Meditating on where once-upon-a-time might be.
I used to think, believe, with an absolutist's certainty, That I knew my youth's coordinates, by heart, Its precise longitude and latitude,
And could take you there, if you showed the least interest In having me carry on about my childhood, Those glowing post-victory days of our "last good war,"
When I grew up in the backyard of an urban duplex, Hid in the pine-tree-shadowed fort my buddies and I built With nothing more than resourcefulness —
You know, stuff dredged up from cluttered basements: Cardboard boxes, tattered blankets, old suitcases, Scrap lumber, paint cans, castoff rugs.
But these days, when our nation has perpetrated So many tragically wasted wars, I'm just not sure, anymore.
Indeed, lately, I find myself questioning Whether once-upon-a-time ever really existed Or if it was all one big delusional conspiracy
Hatched, by my imagination, To mask the dispassion, the vapidness, of my sad life, My fallen-flat-on-their-face dreams of succeeding.
And yet, I still catch glimmers of my after-school gang — Seven- and eight-year-old Audie Murphys — Defeating the armies of Mussolini, Tojo, and Hitler.
11/11/08 - (2)
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