poetry, Volume 4 nubmer 7, August/September 2002, © 1993 by Doreen Fitzgerald

1947

In the undeveloped fields of Fairview Street
we fought the Second War,
crawling through the summer grass,
hiding in gnarled clumps of sumac,
rising suddenly to shoot.
It wasn't tame, that war beyond the bungalows,
we died abundantly and well.
Animating weapons with our tongues,
we rose and fell,
or after someone's sneak attack,
hotly denying death,
we fought along the diplomatic front.
Sometimes we broke for lunch,
or called a truce, when some insistent mother
raised her voice. Sometimes the war
was called because of rain,
or couldn't start, held off by a discussion
of what's fair--who played the German
last, whose turn to be the Jap.
It was a game the grown-ups knew by heart,
as we would too.

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