Do you hear?
Can you see?
The weather,
Or the sea?
You’re wearing a brand new striped T-shirt for you first day of kindergarten
Pump your tiny legs faster and faster
On your cobalt blue tricycle
The one that matches the cloudless Santa Barbara sky when you inevitably wreck it
PB&J’s await on the golden sandy beaches or your birth
Faster
And faster
And faster
And faster
Benjamin Franklin Elementary is calling your name
Faster and faster
The stripes of the TV before the flag and pledge and Sesame Street spin faster
And faster
Drums.
The drums beat long before you know what they mean
You feel them first in your belly
Not on the dance floor
Drums.
The bellicose beat of drums
Unpack your dress blues
Don them and march to the beat of the bellicose drums
Don them
Damn them
Damn them all
You marched to their beat while part of you longed for the sweet solace of graham crackers and milk and naps
You won
But you’re beaten.
You just don’t know it yet
So you recuperate with grandpas and great grandmas at the place of your birth.
State street
A triple mocha drank quietly on the patio of some long defunct bookstore
On lower State street
“Jeffrey…is that you?”
Missus VanWagonner innocently asks.
You pick her up in a hug that swings around to the beat of, well…not bellicose drums… but the drip of your spilt overpriced mocha as you weep inconsolably into your kindergarten teachers welcoming arms.
This is poetically rendered in 2026.
But it actually happened on Lower State Street in Santa Barbara in 1992.
I have no idea how Missus VanWaggoner recognized me.
I hadn’t lived in Santa Barbara since 1973.
But she did.
Somehow, she did.
Here’s to you, Missus VanWagonner.
And to all of the kindergarten teachers who meant so much to those of us who fought wars, foreign and domestic.
And came home broken.
