That today is “Tax-Day”

has nothing to do with this poem

except that Dad paid his taxes,

while feeling trapped by and hating the IRS

for every penny he could not get back from them

but still wanting to be a good citizen

in a country whose government he despised

but whose Promise he admired…

but this poem is about a camping trip

Dad took me on when I was, maybe, 7,

though why he took me I’ll never know

because along with me came Eddie,

Dad’s best buddy from The War

and some Russian woman Eddie called,

“Stratsviuchta-Dosvidanyia”,

(Sorry about the spelling. It means “hello-goodbye” in English)

The four of us slept on beach towels

under a canvas lean-to Dad and Eddie rigged-up

where we camped on Long Island Sound,

like the beach was some Bastogne battle field

they knew about but had never fought in,

( Well, maybe Eddie had, but I don’t remember for sure…)

So, it was me lying next to Dad,

Dad lying next to Stratsviuchta-Dosvidanyia,

she lying next to Eddie

and while I remember feeling a strange,

“all wrongness” about this arrangement,

and though I couldn’t understand why Dad felt “OK” about it,

neither could I do anything about it, anyway,

because it was damp and windy on the beach that night

and like I said, I was only,

well, maybe 6, I think,

My memory is unclear….

So I kept still all night,

listening to muffled, undefinable, moans, grunts and giggles

and being bumped

by the squirms and shifts of Dad’s position in the darkness

I would begin to understand only many years later…

but not that night…

And feeling saved at last

by my raging Mother who stood,

that next evening, on the boat clubs dock

waiting for Father to bring our boat along side

so she could curse-him-out along with Eddie and Stratsviuchta-Dosvidanyia,

then grab me and wisk me off

to my grand-aunt Genevieve’s Brooklyn home,

to camp there without various giggles and moans

while Dad,

without Eddie and what’s her name

tried to figure out how to refill a deep, dark hole in the sand

with some futile apologies and unfathomable ideas he had

about the love he had for his wife and, BTW, me

and how much he could get back

and why he even should…

I was not privy to those skirmishes, but they must have been

something to watch with the rest of the flies on the wall….

Anyway, they worked, somehow…. at least temporarily.

They didn’t divorce, finally, until I was 21…19…?

Just another early childhood episode that’s taken 70-some years

to begin to partially unload.

Maybe, someday, I may see my way through it,

but anyway, Dad’s been dead for two decades,

so, what the Hell, right?

Maybe this poem does have

something to do with life’s

inevitabilities

like death, taxes and memories of love.