Saturday, September 03, 2011
The Lake with the Capital L
Sweet Home Rogers Park
A Lake that looked
Like an ocean,.
Wind that bit.
And, oh, the trees,
Older than time.
Brown buildings
Weathered by the years
And the humanity.
The sounds and smells from the rear porches.
The secrets behind summer’s open windows.
We learned baseball
In the alleys
So always hit to center field.
No left or right, just
Concrete, brick, and passageways.
Sheridan Road
Between Devon and Howard
Felt like a Boulevard of dreams.
Dreams of the future.
Only some broken.
Pratt Boulevard, though, was
Just a street with the
Empty chairs in front of the Pratt Lane
Suggesting ghosts.
Ma and Pa drugstores with
Soda fountains and
Old wooden phone booths.
Diners, and hardware stores and
Grocers that delivered.
Produced gangsters and lawyers and
Doctors and dreamers and writers and
Teachers and ne’er do wells with a
Common history.
Pinners and squirrels on the stoops,
Football and tanks at Loyola Park.
Those yellow civil defense centers and
Draft Boards.
Morse Avenue with
Beaches and buck-buck,
Corn Beef and kishke, and
Fish Fries on Fridays.
Jews and gentiles, and
Cuban émigrés, with a
Smattering of black and brown.
We all walked to school with
The same galoshes and leggings and
Books sometimes read.
Still there, the Lake with a capital L,
The trees and the bitter wind, the ghosts.
But now we are beckoned to dream of the past
Where we think everything was good.
Dream on.
¶ 8:26 AM
