Edith Frost
Wonder Wonder
Drag City Records

It was a row of row houses and one of them we lived in the middle of the block on Sugar Creek Road. Roughly all of us the same in age and energies, our street was full of the sound of small town kids. The Clancy girls and the Hummel boys the Weinsteins and us Kenners. We'd be out there in the back lot messing around all summer long in the tall grass. Or maybe up in the tree house our fathers helped build in the crook of the giant sprawling birch. Inside it was all musty and dank from the leftover living room blue shag we put up before it rained last week. We'd probably play all morning from early until lunch was ready. Grilled cheese sandwiches and cream of tomato soup; a tall, cold glass of farm fresh milk. Each mother called her kids with a distinctive bell that you recognized as your own and running backwards twisting towards home yelling, "Meet you back here after!".

How did we fill those days with so much nothing?

Copyright © 2001 Alice Kenner