Lunch

I have run home
Five blocks
For lunch on the
Screened back porch with
My sisters Sally and Mary,
My brother David and
Our mother who will
Read us stories from
Grimm’s fairy tales.
Sally and I attend the same
Elementary school,
I am older and in
The third grade.
We eat our peanut butter
And grape jelly sandwiches,
Drink our chocolate milk
And follow the storyline
With rapt attention.
Some days we hear Old
Peter’s Russian Folk Tales,
Babushkas and talking
Fish and the human
Foibles and failures
Of our vivid imaginations.
Then Sally and I race back
To school and a long
Afternoon of mindless
Drudgery and routine.
Our minds are racing
Ahead to our race home
And a late afternoon
To play outside until
It gets too dark
To see and we all
Reluctantly come
Inside to dinner.
In ice, snow and rain
We will play board games
And listen to our mother
Play musicals and classical
Music we have memorized.
After our father smokes his
Pipe and reads the newspaper,
We sit down at the supper
Table to engage
In the art of
Conversation,
Followed by
A bit of TV
With our father
Standing cross-armed
In the doorway,
Disapproving of
The “idiot box,”
And then,
One by one,
Youngest first,
Off to bed.