Wilmington, fourth of July, 1942

    I’ll tell you something else
    If you hold still, quit wriggling:
    Time was there was a lot
    More going on in that old town:    
    Old Fourth of July festivities
    For example: the banners
    Parades, everyone coming out

    To play the games, win a
    Stuffed animal or two.
    Back when my family
    Lived in that small
    House owned by Joe Denni
    Who also owned the drug store
    Down on Avalon.  We walked

    Over to Avalon, south
    To Anaheim; then down
    To I street where the town
    square was host each year
    To dreams – didn’t even need
    To say good-bye back then --  
    Lots of quick ways to die,

    But not if you worked in
    “Vital” Los Angeles Harbor
    Industries: our fathers who
    Drank their way to sixty,
    Seventy and beyond.  We on
    The other hand were too young
    To evade the draft and drifted away.