Summer Motor Pool

My solar radio is turned to WGN and I taste like salty SPF Birthday Cake. July

means Harry Caray’s  slushy bellow flies across Ernie Banks’ Friendly Confines.

There’s a long drive, way back in the left field, hits the left field wall,  Holy Cow!

Cubs Win! Cubs Win!  God must be satisfied today.

At the lifeguard stand, I am CCR’s star-spangled fortunate son

shimmering, chlorine sun glints off my Irish tan.

I peacock my park-district-issued swimsuit: candy apple red,

marshmallow white and spandex blue.

Swimming pool patriotism evaporates and melts

at the ICEE stand: pink lemonade, white cherry and blue raspberry.

Brain freeze. Not a care in the world. Wasn’t that the point?

Sunshine soldiers run this public pool, nodding, strutting teens,

enlisted to make the summer move and wave.

Almost adults, we pop and whistle all chlorine season long. I can see my dad’s irritation.

I can see how he can’t make sense of what he missed out on.

The summer after high school, 18 and full of brassy hope,

You signed yourself up for Vietnam.

The recruiter said: if you sign up yourself, you can pick

where you go. What a mean trick.

During your final swim unit in P.E., papers for Saigon in your gym locker, you tried

to baptize yourself back to 17. Who’s satisfied today? No one I know.

You would have killed for this too, a park district summer government job, standing

with your friends, sticking bandaids on skinned knees,

practicing with plastic dummies how not to drown.

In May we end the year with a Vietnam unit and my teacher tells us we won Vietnam—

that we always win. We always win. When I tell you this, you walk into the garage.

Big sad POW/MIA flags clink against the metal pole shooting

out of the pool parking lot. YOU ARE NOT FORGOTTEN. I don’t know

what that means.

You are not here to ask.

Kathleen Fields lives in Chicago. Her honors include a Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Poet & Author Fellowship and a Seventh Wave Digital Residency. She is a poetry reader at Iron Oak Editions and a founding poetry editor of Pine Row Press. She holds an M.A. in Literature from Northwestern University. www.kathleen-fields.com and @kathleenfieldswriter.