SAKURA PARK

By Rebecca F. Rikleen, a member of Get Your Wordsworth

We live on a mighty hill, Herb and I. It rises from a deep valley where a stream still runs under cobble stones and trolley rails paved over into 125th Street. The hill rises many stories for many blocks. Sakura Park perches on the very top, a small gem, a diadem on a rocky head.

It was there before I moved to the hill’s descending side in 1950, sixty two years ago, a sweet grassy leafy square between Rockefeller’s Riverside Church, nominally Baptist, and Rockefeller’s International House, a residence for University students from foreign parts.

School Bus

By Rebecca F. Rikleen, a member of Get Your Wordsworth

We could hear it from around the bend. he boxy bus, bright yellow, high on its wheels, bumped around the curve and stopped at Oatis Viele’s garage each morning at 7:30, barely daylight in December. Up its steep steps my younger brother and I hoisted ourselves and sat down quietly. Our cheeks were red and our breath was visible. Already on the bus were the silent gangly boys from the farms: one from Turnwood, another from the farm next to the fishery, and a third from next to the YMCA camp. My brother and I were new. If they noticed us, it was with a deep reserve, the withdrawn quiet of people who worked alone with their strong arms and their own thoughts.

THANKSGIVING 2011

By Rebecca F. Rikleen, a member of Get Your Wordsworth

Ah! The taste of tender brisket with onions and carrots, bypassing the dry turkey! Ah! The sweetness of the cinnamon raison rolls.
Ah! The once-a-year meeting with the in-law clan.

For 30 years (same time next year), I have tasted, watched, chatted, listened, shared Thanksgiving near Boston. For thirty years I have mourned new deaths, new problems. For 30 years I have celebrated new babies, their growing up, new boy friends, new husbands, new babies. For thirty years I have chatted with energetic cook and baker now in a wheel chair, bright hostess now confused.