Page 26 - WTP VOl. X #6

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Small Paratroopers, 1950
Barn swallows, common as dirt then,
would swoop from the rafters, defending their broods. They strafed us. We thought that was funny.
Cobwebs festooned the dimly lit ell,
where a pair of obsolete tractors
nodded like elders after Thanksgiving’s feast.
My friend Ronnie, scrawny, redheaded, couldn’t remember his father at all: people said his plane was shot down
in the war, but that had been so long ago, Ronnie seemed like anyone else.
We didn’t care about calendar years,
just birthdays: we were all eight
or nine but Jack, who always had trouble at school. He was eleven.
These were the lineaments
of what may or may not have been an Eden. Recollection edits a life.
We used the shed’s oily workbench to fashion our principal pride and joy:
parachutes for our little soldiers.
We made them out of handkerchiefs, string attached to all four corners, and a rubber band to fix them
around the necks of the green tin figures. We’d seen the matinee films.
We all had practiced appropriate noises.
We’d fold our parachutes, throw them skyward, and imitate an explosion. Then we watched our paratroopers
descend through the bland, soft summer air. Or we dropped them from hayloft ladders. None of us could have asked for better–
peanut butter and jelly, Kool-Aid, companions always on hand for fun, vacations that stretched on and on.
No one knew who’d tacked up the banner on one of the walls, block-lettered:
Army Air Force Keep ‘Em Flying!
sydney Lea