Nazis were of no consequence to us,
preteens who did not understand that they really were,
we the Jewish boys of Avers Street born a decade after the hell.
So many of us we fielded two full teams for baseball
and had enough substitutes for basketball
and hockey to play for hours.
When day went dark, you could find us
in my backyard playing Nazi on the jungle gym,
the enemy holding flashlights as they stood guard,
the rest of us crawling away from them
into the tall weeds near the alley,
hiding behind trees and lawn furniture,
trying to break through the heavy brush into Resnick’s yard
until a flashlight bean caught us
and we stood head down and went back to start.
In hot afternoons, we sat in the cool shade of my porch
playing the war game, Stratego,
whooping it up when the spy killed the general,
when a bomb blocked the way to an officer hideout,
and marveled as Marty beat us again and again
hiding his flag naked near the back of the board
while we moved across it into bombs in search of it.
He won again and again until a spy bumped it in one careless move.
I preferred my two colonels and learned quickly
when they went down, my energy left me
and I easily discovered my way to defeat.
When night fell, we gathered in the yard for another night of Nazi,
taking turns with the flashlight, crawling away to safety,
but always a flashlight lit our face and always
we stood and carried ourselves back home.