Atlantic City - Two Photographs

 

Summer 1928

She stands on the Boardwalk

in her Mary-Janes

wearing a cloud of a dress and

a string of pearls.

She smiles as the breeze

blows a wisp of her dark bob.

Below her on the sand

a scattering of bathers

stretch out to the ocean.

Her charges, cousins Sonny and Alice,

build a sand castle

out of the camera's view.

Soon they will follow her back home

to the house on Rhode Island Avenue

where Uncle George rents out a garage

and Aunt Olga runs a rooming house.

where the upstairs rooms go to paying guests

and she and her sister sleep in the basement.

Fall 2002

She stands in her red jacket

arm and arm with Alice

beneath Absecon Lighthouse

($7 now to walk to the top).

The Boardwalk is hidden

behind mammoth casinos.

Uncle George and Aunt Olga are gone

Sonny too, their golden boy,

shot down over North Africa.

Still she smiles, remembering

learning to roller skate,

seeing Jack Dempsey and the first Miss America.