We idled long that summer

playing ball in a the sandlot on Finley Street

and cavorting in our favorite swimming hole

fighting Nazis and Japs

up the red clay hills, in the afternoons.

Chris & me & Toby Clark

Gregg & his dog Sparky

and the great Mackie Crouch.

Constant in our devotion to each other

boys-in-arms, close as brothers

fixed forever in my memory—

and the camera's eye.

Cry

When a baby cries in The Holy Lands

You will not know her name

Or where she lives

Her nursery rhymes

To whom her parents pray.

It is a language all its own

Shared by children everywhere

And speaks of hunger, hope and love

And pain, and lose—despair.