Holiday Picnic

Above us, the stars. Now your beacon rainbows a swath of night’s dark waters, glorifies the flimsy barrier between us:

we prism, we rainbow, we become the light between us.

H o l i d a y P i c n i c

On Memorial Day the residents of our Bronx apartment building would pile into cars for our annual picnic up in West Chester at Ardsley Park. It had what for us was a wondrous stream— frogs, little fish we’d try to catch with nets, flowers, and stones for fording the chilly water. Our parents taught us the silly songs they sang at day camp during the Second World War, which seemed so distant from and romantic to us. We learned that our ears hang low, yes, they wobble to and fro, we can tie them in a knot, we can tie them in a bow. We rowed, rowed, rowed our boat as far as time, music and our ability to sustain a round would take us. We ate roasted chicken and hot dogs, hamburgers with all the fixings, potato chips (the really old-fashioned kind, laden with oil), and watermelon. At sunset we drove back to the Bronx, exhausted, a little cranky and sticky, but also sated fully on the joy of living.