-the beginning-

my father and my mother

met briefly before

they’d dance in each other's arms
across the linoleum floor

of the basement at the Sons of Italy Hall

on Covel Street every Saturday night.

their beginning went something like this:

he’s playing a pick-up game
of tackle football in Columbus Park

and she sees the game playing-out
beyond the chain-link fence across the street

from her living-room window on Bedford
between the ESSO station and Marzilli’s Bakery.

she calls her friend Francis, two houses up

and they meet outside and cross the street to the fence.

she was less than seventeen but not

less than fourteen.

she’d seen him before, hanging around

the street corner during twilight at the right-field line

with his tough-guy friends, leaning

on the sweeping, heavy-metal fenders,

smoking cigarettes and swigging Cokes from the bottle.

now his buddies are carrying him
off the field with his neck broken
from a cheap-shot delivered by a Ruggles Park roughneck

and as the story goes,...

as his friends transported him through the gate
and into the backseat of Charlie Conforti's snazzy '36 Desoto
for a fast drive to the Union Hospital,  
she jumped uninvited into the front seat to ride along
and from that place in the beginning they were hooked for life.

                                                                           Quequechan