Discovering Empathy
Junior High, 1959
We played strip poker after school,
two Catholic girls, two shy Lutheran boys,
on Wednesdays when Sally's parents worked late.
We'd meet at the corner outside of St. Mary's
after the girls' Religion class
and walk together to Sally's house,
Bobby and I both puffing on Camels,
Delores and Sally describing
the games they planned for us that day.With Elvis and Paul Anka singing to us,
Sweetarts and Juicy Fruit on our breath,
we'd shuffle the cards on the living room rug,
remain mostly innocent girls and boys
and ignorant of intruders with guns,
abusive clergy, dangerous drugs
that didn't plague kids sixty-plus years ago.Tonight, I watch news from Gaza, Ukraine.
Disgusted by gore and political greed,
I think of Delores who joined the Peace Corps,
and died in a crossfire of bullets in Somalia,
of Agent Orange that stole Bobby's lungs,
leaving his wife, three children behind,
of Sally, sweet Sally, who went to New York,
joined the Sisters of Charity, worked forty years
in Harlem teaching and feeding the homeless.She and I talked until Covid took her
but never mentioned those junior high games—
the way we kids watched over one another
long ago when we threw on our clothes
quickly, before her parents got home.
