Memorial Day Weekend Three

Before 1967 I was young and unaware of most of the world around me. Like Henry Adams my world was split between winter and summer. The winter was mostly school and homework, but the summer meant the lake. My parents had a summer cottage on a small lake in New Hampshire, and I spent every summer up there living the pastoral life. Nothing of the real world touched our lives there, except maybe for the Red Sox.

But the summer of 1967 brought a change in the air. My brother’s best friend at the lake, Paul, had been killed that winter in Viet Nam. My friend, Paul’s younger brother, was never the same. I don’t think I saw him at all that summer, or after. Paul had been the type of older boy all the younger ones admired. He was athletic, good-looking, and drove a motorcycle. But he was also a genuinely good person, always affable and never mean or condescending to us kids. And his girl friends were always good-looking. I was shocked that such a life could be snuffed in an instant.

The Fall of Avalon on Half Moon Lake
Labor Day 1966

Late Monday afternoon, the summer gone
the way of woodland elves returning home,
I called on folks I'd known since Oberon
conceived that year's delight—within the foam
of April crashing on the shores of June.
Instead of friends in song I heard a tune
at rest. My buddy Nick, his mom and dad,
his brothers, sisters, Puck their beagle pup,
—and Black Hawk motorbikes revving like mad
besides the Falcon wagon starting-up
to take another trip to Lord knows where—
were missing. Emptiness refilled the air.

The lake was vacant also. Rafts and docks
stormed September's beach with hostile lines.
Gone were the curves of bodies, beach balls, socks
and shoes, and sand mandala-like designs.
Harmony disappeared from tarn and wood.
I stood forsaken in a neighborhood
deserted of its June, July, and August.
Longing for that peaceable kingdom’s fun—
if just the father's kicking-up some sawdust
with horseshoes—I went and waited March's sun,
never guessing winter's draft would damn
the spring and spirit Nick away to Nam.

copyright Gregory Perry 2004

Of course nothing was ever the same for the nation after that year. But Paul will always be for me the innocence we lost in that godforsaken jungle of the Viet Nam years. And because of him I will never forget.