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Beyond croaking frogs
singing in swampland the first railroad men streamed to claim the land, processions of Germans, Bohemians, Slavs, Irish, men like George and Dominic, with strong backs and sturdy thick hands that carried pickaxes resting comfortably on broad shoulders covered in overalls that spoke of dirt, and sweat, and belonging.

On past pink peonies  
and dazzling white snow-ball bushes that decorated two-story, framed, working-class homes lined up in straight rows along majestic streets of stately oaks and regal elms that shaded ordinary housewives like Gertrude and Johanna who all hung white starched sheets on strong stretched lines to blow in the wind and under which children silently stooped hoping to deceive the mothers who called for Rosie and Butch and Eddie knowing all along that they hid there.

Discovered,
we suspended play to fetch bottles of milk from ma & pa grocery stores like Haas’ or Hesse’s, or to fetch fathers home from saloons that stood like sentinels on every corner with telling names like Nickel Joint, or Lenahans, or St. Marie's, places filled with smells of stale cigar smoke, acrid beer, and perfumed and rouged bar-maids who Dad always said were prostitutes.

For years we walked  
down alleyways lined with trash cans to reach the red-bricked castle of St. Agnes that stood watch over minds and counsel over consciences and we scaled stone walls along streets where families settled together, brother next to brother, daughter next to mother, and where family business was private and no one interfered but only shut the window or pulled the shade and shrugged.

And we trembled
when Dad sat in an upstairs window with a shotgun in one hand and a whiskey in the other ready to shoot intruders who marched down Dale Street in the heat of hot sixties summer nights or shoot boyfriends who might not look right or act right, boys like Bobbie and Nates and Chuck, who Dad always said never could look you straight in the eye--they must be hiding something.

On past the free and easy times
of love-ins, trying to find "where it’s at," rebelling and mellowing, preaching peace at sit-down demonstrations about Viet Nam and marching for civil rights, all the time knowing that Big Brother watched but laughing through long straight hair that fell on Corn-Silk faces and fathers and mothers shook their heads and wondered where they went wrong.

Back then  
walking in the middle of street with a brick in your hand in fear of shadows was the birth of death for the sanctuary we called Frogtown, that once provided belonging and privacy and place to those blue-collared laborers who built the two-story framed houses that now sit on tattered streets and provide asylum for refugees, crack dealers, and pimps.

Now only the lonely wind  
howls more chillingly than the pop of bullets from drive-by shootings and sirens follow uniformed men on horseback past decaying dreams of old women like Gertrude and Johanna who still remember the sounds of frogs singing, of dirt and sweat and tales of belonging told by fathers and husbands long since gone; women who hide behind deadbolted doors and barred windows, who turn down hearing aids against unwelcome sounds, yet stay in memories and sing their own sweet song of belonging...