-at the Hugo A. Dubuque School-

1.

The turtle is turned on its back

Upon the asphalt of the schoolyard.
The turtle inverted has four useless legs
And its time is running out.

This is the age of death's exploration.

Killing creatures
Was a rite of passage for the boys;

Grasshoppers to the webs of the widows,

Toothpicks through the ladybugs,—
Squishing caterpillars beneath the soles
Of our sneakers,— tossing

Hornworms into the wacky throngs of red ants

Climbing over one another for a taste,
Tattle-tailing,
Waving their antennae, knocking heads,—

Displaying their intelligence.

The wackiest kid
Got his hands on a magnifying glass

And any slow-mover
Was doomed to the needled-ended
Spike of the Sun.

On their knees at the carnage,
The boys laugh like lunatics

Elbowing each other at the first
Crackling spit of bug-smoke

As the girls, their delicate arms folded
Just above the waistlines of the crisp
Day-dresses, lean on the high,
Over-the-head chain linked fence,
Blank-faced and anticipating.

2.
There’s a famous 1940s photograph

Of a drowned man sprawled on the beach

At Coney Island, surrounded by a semicircle
Of grey-faced onlookers in high-waisted
Bathing-suits as a few attendants fail
In their struggle to release him
Back into the sea of the living.

His young wife, kneeling in the sand
Next to his dead head,

Realizes the still-shot camera at the ready,
And smiles broadly as the shutter clicks
To document the scene.

She smiles because it’s instinctive for her to do so

Whenever a camera is poised in her direction.

The schoolyard girls observing the brutality
Of life and death at the fence near the tarmac
Are as engaged, but colder;

Austere at the moment of the truth.

3.

The Maypole stands for the school's
Mayday festivities

And the alternating boys and girls,
Dressed-up,
Starched and serious are walking
In a slow circle around it.
They hold in their hands, pole-attached strips
Of crepe paper;
Red white and blue, marching like benign
Circus creatures,
Corkscrewing the pole, delighting the audience
Of parents and teachers in attendance.

From the open doors of the red-brick building,
Down the granite stairway, each flight worn in the middle,
The electrical extension cord winds its way outward
To where the appropriate fanfare trumpets upon a folding table
From the portable record player.

                                                    Quequechan