Of Carolyn Dziok (rhymes with kayak)

                    

                  Carolyn Dziok lived throughout her youth nestled in her parents

                  house seated across the street from my second floor bedroom window

                  in the semi-pastoral district of the city known as the lower highlands.

                  It's where our first (and only) residential, single-family (three bedrooms upstairs)

                  house sat, tucked neatly into the neighborhood of avenues, manicured frontage

                  and calmer attitudes.

                  The highlife up the lower highlands:

                  With the summertime sun, my young father's sale's ledger is filled, page after page

                  by each month’s end and mounting commissions mean money in the bank.

                  He’s selling booze from his traveling Buick by the truckload across the Cape

                  from Buzzard’s Bay to Wellfleet. We're living high on the hog.

                  Stick a three cent on the envelope to Easy Street.

                  Paparazzo:

                  From a steamy Saturday morning’s secret window, Carolyn is seen washing

                  her farther’s sleek-finned Chevy Bel Air, hosing it down from the soapy street-

                  side of young romance.

                  The glitterati:

                  Tonight, she's at the front door dressed in a rare sighting, perfumed and spray-fixed

                  for the dance downtown, as my sister (three years my elder) skips down the staircase

                  to greet her slicker than Loretta Young.

                  I’m in the recess of the hallway keeping my mouth shut.

                  They’ll go to the dance dressed like the porcelain dolls who sit atop the glittering

                  bedroom dressers.

                  My father will drive them to their passions in his Roadmaster, the top liquor salesman’s                          heavy-footed rite of passage.

                  Tonight, they’ll sweep them off their feet across the dance-floor; the floral scent of Wind                      Song perfume with a Buick's lingering hint of Narraganset Lager Beer and Seagram's                         VO whispering through the blonde, near imperceptible filament of their arms.

                  Dolce:

                  I’ll be sleeping when he drives downtown to get them.

                  I’ll be sleeping when he brings them home.

                  In the morning I’ll be watching from the window.
                  Winter will set upon our good fortune soon enough.

                  1956? / 1957