-an examination of a previously recorded moment-

 

some time ago in the grip of warm weather,

posing outside the entryway to our earliest house,

a snapshot was taken.

my brother, three years the younger,

stands beside me alongside his new bicycle

as I stand beside him alongside my own.

he'll maintain his bike meticulously

as it arrived from the store downtown

where both bikes were purchased by our father
at the same time of the same day.
I never knew what it was he bought for our sister,
three years my elder, but
I'll bet it cost more than the price of two bicycles.

my brother rides it high in the saddle, — handlebars
positioned as corporately prescribed, its grips
leveled toward the chest as drawn by the Schwinn engineers.

he wants the chain-guard bolted in place because

the bike came to him that way,
reasoning that at the store downtown
they must know what they’re doing.

I can't ride across the street to the corner

with my bike in that condition.

so I drop the saddle.

the handlebars are loosened by the central bolt

and turned downward, the new horns of the Schwinn,
altering the generally accepted configuration

in the on-going romance of young rebellion. 

the chain-guard, our young mother’s last-
line of defense against grease on the cuff is removed,
but only when far from her line-of-sight.

these procedures mean nothing when applied

to the physics of momentum, but only because
we can't ride the bikes fast enough to present
a finding of proof.

but they separate the bike-riders
of the corner across the street like myself,

from the younger kids consigned to the sidewalks
like my brother.

as to the snapshot:
it was taken by uncle Frank Toni,
on Sunday leave from his southend cobbler shop,

before any covert alterations took place, during the time

when everyone would live forever.


Quequechan

-Interruption-

Tonight, it's Seamus Heaney, — a poem

Written of his younger self away at school,

Informed of the accidental death of his brother,

A child of four years.

Arriving to the deep   

Distress at the porch to his house

The old men gathered there

Are rising to their feet, shaking his hand,

Sorry for his troubles.

Then in the midst of Heaney's heart-beat,

The cold phosphorescence of television intrudes 
With its cunning seduction and the reading is paused.

It will be an hour

Before I find my way back

To "Mid-Term Break" —

An hour to the atmosphere

Greying heavily

Folding layer on layer —

An hour to the child

Gauze-swaddled by nurses
Carried to the house in funeral steps,

The child thrown clear of the thresher's
Rattling bumper — (was as if

The seed's husk bruised his head) –– 

An hour to find my way to the porch once again

Where a cradle is rocking with life anew, 

Where a mother mourns grief sick

For the loss of her child four years and done,

And upon the bed in the silent upstairs room

Candles and snowdrops grace the little coffin;

"A four foot box, a foot for every year."

                                                      

-why poetry-

within the first

moments casting my father
in the lead role, the scenes are set
in an effort to give everything a strong foundation.

one of the poems takes place at his funeral

where I approach in order to move him around,

get him up, wipe away the matte
powder and vulgar rouge from his face,

maybe take off 30 or 40 years,

re-dress him, then send him on his way

toward whatever journey I’ll set for him.

a few poems find him traveling with a purpose,
east on route 6 in his Buick.

others, have him sitting at the frantic supper tables.

a recent poem takes place
during the beginning of his final years

initiated from a faded snapshot which has him
standing and waving happily to the crowd
of well-wishers, in his trench-coat and WW2
Italian-American veteran's cap on the parade route
rolling down Bedford Street

from a Cadillac convertible, introducing him by paper placards
masking-taped to the doors announcing him
as: “Honorary Parade Chairman” of the Columbus Day Parade.

               "Honorary Chairman".
               (not elected Chairman)

                This year's Place-Setter.
                Silver medalist chosen by Committee. 
                The liquor salesman on the road.
                Glad-hander extraordinaire.  
                Responsible husband and citizen.
                Stable, reliable father of three.
                On-time payer of monthly bills.
                

another I’m particularly drawn to

finds him simply hanging around the corner

with his buddies when everybody was young, active,

and me, unborn.

but I like to keep him moving.

what I also try to do within the poems

is allow everybody else inside the architecture

to move along with him.

this is easily accomplished as the linkage
is pre-set by history.
but somebody else has to write their particular poetry.

I don’t take credit for understanding,
let alone defining

the personal inner movements of any of them.

-at first sight-

when she walked through the din

of the crowded corridors she left in her wake

a polished filament of jet-stone hair and the lingering

scent of Ivory soap.

my eyes were on a level

plain with her eyes as she passed
without a glancing note of my presence,

and although I’m not tall she is taller than the girls

mulling around her;

a descendant of the formidable

Portuguese,–– bloodline of the Azores,

great granddaughter to the island fisher,

granddaughter to the wine-
grape cultivator of  São Miguel,
first daughter to the sweltering

Kerr-Thread Textile Mill's boiler-tender,––

the living romance of this olive-skinned

beauty of the Westside Projects

rising in red-brick from its authority on the banks of the Taunton.

nearing seven decades, and this historical recollection came to be penned
after reading the obituary page in the morning's newspaper, of which not a word

nor phrase from that frigid column honored Madalena Mello's memory as I have here.