My Treasure
Posted: April 13, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »I keep my treasure in a small wooden box on a table in my bedroom. The box is intricately carved on top … made in Malaysia or Thailand … someplace where they still make things by hand. I keep the box next to pictures of loved ones that have gone on to live with the eternal warmth of the sun and the black night, The box gets dusted every week. I make sure it’s arranged optimally on the table so that visitors can see it, inspect its contents.
Inside the box is a curl of brown hair, taken from my nephew when he was just nine months old. For something that’s been shut up in a box for the past 17 years, it’s still remarkably tinged with light, as if he, sitting in the backyard in the brilliant July sun had only yesterday had his hair cut.
I keep his hair because it reminds me of sweet days holding him in my arms, playing ball and living in moments shared by just the two of us. It reminds me of the look on his face, when he’d gaze up at me — waiting anxiously for the next words to come out of my mouth.
When I pick up that curl, hold it between my fingers, it reminds me how it feels to be loved … unconditionally.
Leaving Roberto
Posted: March 23, 2012 Filed under: Loss, Love Leave a comment »
Jake held the boy in the crook of his arm. This would be the last time that he would see his “bambino,” and despite his efforts to be brave, Jake couldn’t stop the water from collecting in tiny pools at the bottom of his eye lids.
Roberto studied each stream of water as it rolled down Jake’s cheeks. The child was just 9 months, but he knew that something was wrong. This was no ordinary visit.
Jake was saying goodbye to the orphanage. He was being shipped home. The last fascist in Italy was either dead or in prison, and the army was now giving him a free ride back to Brooklyn, USA, with its pizza joints, Nedicks soft drink billboards, the lush green of Prospect Park and noisy summer nights spent on fire escape balconies.
Peace and home. This was Jake’s dream ever since getting called up in ’42. So why did he now want to abandon all that wishing he’d done in foxholes throughout Europe? All that time, right up until Mussolini got hung upside down, all Jake wanted was a cold beer in his favorite bar in Bensonhurst. Now, all he wanted was to stay in Bolzano with Roberto.
In Jake’s imaginings, he’d get a job, maybe with the occupation forces, and he could keep coming back to the orphanage every Sunday with packages of food and a toy or two. In his wildest thoughts, he would find an Italian girl, marry and then adopt Roberto. It would be a happy ending, just like in the movies.
It was already 4, and afternoon visiting hours were over. There was nothing Jake could do but put Roberto back in his crib. He noticed how the child immediately grabbed one of the rails, flaking with chips of white paint, and pulled himself up to try and climb out. Jake leaned over and gave the boy kisses, leaving wet marks on Roberto’s cheeks.
“That’s the last he’ll know of me,” Jake thought.
As he made his way out to the hallway beyond the ward, great sobs emerged from Jake, shocking sounds that made him hide his face in shame. The nuns looked up from their chores with the other children and watched him.
Roberto stood in his crib, holding onto a thin rail. The boy began to cry.
Ugly Comfortable
Posted: March 15, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »Fear.
Ugly comfortable,
Like a greasy comforter you can wrap your nerve-ending-tingling sad body in.
Never moving from the safe spot,
Ignoring the undiscovered wilderness of opportunity.
Full of cold sunshine, bright with snow and sky … so frozen the trees snap.
Disappeared
Posted: March 9, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »No note,
the bed unmade,
the milk, imprisoned in plastic,
left to grow solid on the kitchen table.
Winter’s gray made me insane, and
so I flew on steel wings to Buenos Aires,
where the air is humid and smells of unwashed
sins, and the sun beats down in anger on oceans
of grass,
and the red wine flows, numbing my Yankee brain.
Meditation
Posted: February 20, 2012 Filed under: Meditation 3 Comments »On my day off, there is
the gym
afternoon mass
a walk with a friend.
But what about sitting still
in my chair by the window,
letting every truck that comes by
and rattles the floor
be,
along with the sound of heat pumping from the radiator?
In the other room, the clock on the wall ticks. Each stroke like a wine glass shattering against the wall.
The ice-maker in the fridge talks to me.
All beautiful
and terrifying.
Afternoon Light
Posted: February 16, 2012 Filed under: Nature, Poetry | Tags: snow and ice, winter light Leave a comment »Golden rays cast two lines, one shaded dark, one light upon the carpet where I lie still. This is winter light in the afternoon of my discontent. Why cannot I be happy with this small glory; why must I yearn for the blinding light of summer, when the carpet on which I sleep will scorch my back with heat and blind my eyes, making me flee the sun in search of shade, where I will think with fondness of snow and ice?
Crocus in Snow
Posted: February 14, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: also found on www.poetrysoup.com Leave a comment »What is happiness but the falling away, however short, of suffering?
Would I hear the haunting wind without
the drafty spaces around my ancient windows?
Would I know the joy of a child’s laugh
if I didn’t yearn for it to erupt from my own belly?
The sight of the first yellow crocus
could not be so kind without the cruel snow
that tries to hide it.
Last Wishes
Posted: February 8, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »Your
Last
Wishes
Assumed all
Would go glass-smooth.
But forests are dark places,
And your children are no longer innocent.
Calming
Seas
Mask storms.
I now shed
my obligation.
So pour your wrath down from above.
On
Me.
Your heirs
Scorn me too.
Uncle Jim
Posted: February 2, 2012 Filed under: Loneliness, Love | Tags: Also found on Poetrysoup.com 1 Comment »1963.
I ran crying to Uncle Jim, who stood by the barn door.
I didn’t want to leave him.
As I hugged him, I tried to hold the moment as long as I could, smelling the
rotting leaves in the nearby forest, the damp October air, and the mustiness of the inside of the barn.
The morning dew was uncomfortable, soaking my toes in my Hightops, but I wanted to hold onto him and his large belly. It was just 8 a.m., but he had a tie on, a clip with a bronze deer holding it in place against his white shirt. He said: “Oh, kid, you and me, kid … you and me.” He smelled sweet — of aftershave and pipe smoke. But the car was waiting, all packed.
My grandparents yelled one more time: “Donny, come on. Now!”
I got in the car and kept my eyes on Uncle Jim, alone by the barn, waving goodbye.
He always held his head to one side, a war injury.
It may have been what caused him to drink but it could also have been depression — living in a place so wild and dark, where the winters were cold, long … and snow was measured in feet.
So far from his family.
I cried for two hours through the Green Mountains, the valleys of orange and yellow trees and granite gravestones, where I imagined that men with stovepipe hats and ladies with hoop skirts lay underneath the green earth, side by side.
Little houses with steeply pitched roofs that kept off the snow in winter went by in a blur.
As we crossed the border into New York, I wondered if Uncle Jim, too, by now surely in his house watching snowy TV, was crying.
1975.
Grandma called to tell us Uncle Jim died. That night, I felt him standing beside my bed.
2012.
When I think of Uncle Jim, and how he held me, what he said to me in 1963, I still cry.
Even now.
Smiling Thoughts
Posted: January 24, 2012 Filed under: Haiku, Poetry | Tags: Entered into poetry contenst on http://clownponders.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/the-poetry-challenge-week-1-smiling-thoughts/ Leave a comment »Smiling thoughts – a rope
that helps me fight off sadness
I climb to the sun
