I had enough ‘roughing it’ in the Army.
Yet that August, Dad sacrificed scant vacation
for a rustic cabin up north,
Idle-Awhile-in-the-Pines.

Boring for post-Eisenhower near-teens
too old for enchanted forests and kid’ly imaginings,
missing our fan mag and rummy gangs,
our buddy hangouts supplanted by brine.

Cranky in the spare, cold-at-night cabin,
too young for welcome at the evening hot spot
where local teens watusi'd to Jan & Dean,
we spied beside the jukebox shrine.

By day we winced over gravelly beach
to splash in the sludge-floored bay,
weed-entangled ankles abetting our antics,
sister-tipping for Dad’s 8mm Kodak.

Immortalized awkward age,
flickering now on plaster walls
projected large as life this half-century later
Mom splashing with us, Dad preserving us.

Soundless mugging and sprocket chatter
conjure the laughter of basement screenings;
warmed celluloid scents the room,
incense from each lens-haloed frame.

I wade into the dusty beam:
immersed in faded images
we idle awhile together again, waving
as the reel fades to white.

Jo Scheder explores poetry as alternative ethnography, following a career as an anthropologist. Her poems appear in Verse Wisconsin; Poets to Come: A Celebration of Walt Whitman's Bicentennial; Bards Against Hunger Anthology and Wisconsin Chapbook; Leaves of Peace Anthology; and Poetry Hall Chinese & English Bilingual Journal.