-lone wolf / this way to grapevine- 

I was told my maternal grandfather

was a young, apprentice shoe-maker in the old country;

Lucca, Italy, near the western coast of the Ligurian Sea.

this was told to me by my aunt Antoinette Toni, years after his death.
for reasons unknown to me now,
I assumed he was a potato farmer in the old country.

but he lived his adult life, (all of my childhood

from birth through grade school) the family patriarch, residing
in the great interior of the house which housed the lot of us.

and of course, occupying the exterior, too.

there, he cultivated grapes from a tangled overhead vine

built before he came to this place.

but it was he, who tended the vine, pressed its grapes
into a sweet, dark red wine from his cellar, eventually
funneling the port into long necked, black-glass bottles.

a dank, midnight grey hangs in the air down there.

old stone and mortar walls crumbling,–– still holding.

a giant plaster-cased furnace defunct as a coal burner,

the floor, a dense, black, moist earth.

next to the press, a great cask and next to the cask

a discarded kitchen stool which held a small drinking glass.

It will take another poem to describe this glass.well, to begin,

the glass was used daily to sample the wine from the cask;

a small amount for swishing and swallowing before the glass was

placed back upon the stool. It was never washed.

It will take another poem for a more detailed description.

Its title: “The Glass”

the grapevine also served as comfort shade

in the sweltering summer months where he, his wife, family

and friends socialized under its canopy; the resonance
of the Italian romance, the germanic

stringencies of English and the strains in broken English 

murmuring through the atmosphere.

the kids played in the yard, strolled through the craggy

vegetable garden catching hoppagrassers.

I remember a few metal

folding chairs, more straight-backs in wood

and an old, weathered picnic table which gave me splinters

with benches on each side, all of which were placed

across the cement foundation of the small pleasure-ground and
the scent of rainfall tapping the dense canopy of the leaves.

-poem on this day-

the regional Bishop is

calling for peace in our time.

he's sitting in a chair befitting his station.

behind him hangs a reproduction

of Mary in the Clouds with Putti.

so I'm looking around the four walls of my room:

an early drawing from my art school days.

an early drawing from a friend’s art school days.

a small mirror. an abandoned three
penny nail protruding from its space waiting for something.

a photo of my young father in bootcamp khakis.

my young mother in the park with her sisters.

there are two interior windows at the corner forming a right angle and

if I factor-in the outside,–– houses, trees, birds and overcast skies.

so that’s that.

now this:

I should look around more often.

I used to look around more often

                       when I was a younger man.

maybe
I take things for granted.

I should know better.

things change.
sometimes life moves backward.

there are marching protesters again.

there’s a killer virus out there. there's the long
blue line of cops forming in tight horizontal formation

the way the Redcoats did at Lexington and Concord.

a decomposing president holds a Bible as if he's holding
a block of dry ice, glimpsing the spine to make sure it is what he was told it is.

June 5, 2020.

-“I don’t care if it rains or freezes, long as I got

my plastic Jesus, ridin' on the dashboard of my car”-

It was a familiar tune; well, familiar to those well-tuned

to the dashboard radio stations of weary salesman favorites.

plastic Jesus was cream-colored, about 3 inches high,
could be 4 inches as it got older or as the road got longer.

It was manufactured in some exotic asian continent hideaway,

its eyes set toward the open road, its base taped down for safety,

its back to the road’s receding history as are most moving objects ––

like hairlines or gums.

we don’t see this thing around much anymore, but

I sort-of liked the little guy.
he got the family to Horseneck Beach, or Lincoln Park, or
the picnic grounds at the Narrows, with a lot of yelling along the way, sure,
but resulting in only a few minor injuries.

reminds me of the time when Priest, sitting in his Pontiac

with its motor running in front of the rectory, was hearing
Albert Fazarro's curbside confession, Priest's head nodding along
through Albert's recital, especially attentive during the "self-abuse" section
as if he liked hearing about it.

Priest had one of these plastic guys sticking up there for its navigational assistance,
but Priest's plastic Jesus was a 5 incher easy

and during Albert's confession, Priest's dashboard radio
was playing: "Get a Job" by the Silhouettes,

followed by Albert's marginally sincere "Act of Contrition."

-a cookout-

holiday.

people are stopping by.

casually dressed to blend.

it’s a backyard cookout.

the people are in mourning,

a proclamation for the fallen.
for the fallen.

for the dead in heavy fabric blue

and heavy fabric grey, posing for pictures,

yawning, bloated, ––  the hunkered

doughboys of the trenches. the whistle!

over the top, boys!
the crackle of terrible fire!

the doughboys hit, slide back down
along the walls of the trench

where mud is the resting-place to eternity.

(drier sand along the beachheads absorb more blood,

but the stains are washed with the tide.) 

the youngster's ask:
"hey, dad, what did you do in the war"?
they lift their shirts displaying scars long before
Lyndon showed us his.

(for purposes of clarification, Lyndon's scar
was the result of gallbladder surgery.)

"hey, hey, LBJ!
how many kids did you kill today?!"

"It's from a Nazi bayonet, my boy", the fathers say.

cookout !

disinfect those garden tomatoes

plucked from the path of the hungry hornworm!

there are heroes to honor.
damn the hornworms and pass the piccalilli !

("piccalilli" is chosen here because I need
a four syllable word with the accent on the third syllable
as in "ammunition.")

spread the word over there. over there !

("over there" is taken from the WW1 patriotic tune
to warn the German's that: "the Yanks are coming.")

spread the word over there there’s a cookout over here !

5/25/20

-the name of the church was “Our Lady of the Holy Rosary”-

1.
quite a mouthful, but "Holy Rosary" choked it up.

The "Mary's” they called us.

the memory of Bobby Petrillo, a ballplayer who can not defend himself

because he’s dead, is now in my hands.

I thought about this over a bowl of Kellogg’s cornflakes.

a good second baseman, particularly going to his right into

the shallow gap at center, backhanding the bounding ball

and throwing the runner out at first.

that’s true.

It happened at South Park against "Saint Anthony of Padua"

called the "Anthony’s” or the "Paddy’s" –– or my favorite, the "Tony’s”.

but it happened on more than one occasion, so

it wasn’t a “lucky play” like the "Paddy's" were droning from their bench.

"lucky play.. lucky play"..

damn Portuguese.

It's true.
It was they who coined the obviously pejorative term: the "Mary’s”––

2.

If I had to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth

as in the attempt above, it would negatively soften the edge of poetry.

better to drizzle a little salt into the narrative and besides,
it's not like they wouldn't do it to me if it was me who croaked.

-requiem for small domestic animals with a consideration to others-

1.
Thom McAn was a popular shoe-man

and invaluable neighborhood asset
in the small pet casket-making business.

and now this:

there’s a dead skunk floating

in my neighbor's pool and she

want's me to take a look.

I scooped it out with the skimmer

and flipped it over the backyard fence

into a patch of low-lying brush.

(as my young mother would've opined:

“poor little thing.”)

the death of the housefly was different.

she’d smash it with the wire-mesh swatter

so hard, the aftermath looked like Jackson Pollock
stopped by to paint her a new one.

2.
the Germans are angry again.

the French continue flummoxed
at the lack of respect for their war effort,
and with the passage of time, the Italians

seem to have softened the edges of the animated
exaggerations of their hand gestures.

3.
under consideration were alternative placements
for the skunk in the water, none more fitting than the one chosen.

I'm living in the time of the sticky virus, and

attitudes are changing by the hour with news on a roll.

overcast skies this morning.

5/28/20

-On the new Daphne Gottlieb-

1.

I've moved restlessly through its pages and

“Vamp” remains a favored entry.

It begins on page 15 ending on 19, and now

I'm nearly half-way through the poem "Anne's Neck"

beginning on page 30.

I like what I've read of Gottlieb, absorbing

what I can along the way by slowing the pace, but
sometimes moving with a sense of urgency
leading to a feeling of not being fully engaged.
mea culpa. mea culpa.
she doesn’t make it easy.

2.

I admit to paying the premium price for the volume

by being impetuous and not exploring the crowded

territory of the Amazon platform and

I'm now informed by third parties that other sellers

are offering "Final Girl" at lower prices, but
3.

what’s done is done.

truthfully, I'm thrown off my game when confronting 
the sharpest edges of the feminine side of the planet

and because it's an open and shut case not in my favor,

no formal complaint will be lodged against

the seller over the amount paid for Gottlieb's "Final Girl."

It's well worth the price at the sum whose line is drawn

at the close of each page.

now transitioning from page 32: "Speak Truth?"

to page 33: "Whiskey Tango Romeo."

-compass heading south by west to the snapshots-

the southwest corner at 1017 Bedford, City,

the backside of the house near the drainpipe.

this is where we navigate to pose stone-cold for photographs.
one could say it started with maternal grandparents, then

to parents, in turn passed to us, the three kids in residence.

others showed-up, too.

cousins, aunts, uncles, friends, kids on bikes,

kids scheming to bypass adult restrictions, catholic

schoolgirls in blue rayon jumpers with boyfriends in white cotton

teeshirts displaying soft-packs of cigarettes as a rite of passage to manhood.

inside, this is where the kitchen sink was located and

to its right, a small counter space where

the chickens were plucked and their feet

removed for the broth of my grandfather’s soup.

outside again and the southwest corner is active with temporary figureheads 

giving way to others who long to see themselves captured in miniature form.

(It's a small patch of ground; a plot of land to be entered upon,
recorded for posterity, then vacated the way God intended)

the posing are facing westward toward the grapevine, slightly

to the south of their elbows, the craggy vegetable garden to the east

and Rachlin’s Junkyard in dead-ahead reckoning

just over the fence across Healy.

so that’s where we are in the time of Eisenhower and Stevenson, 

my young parents reportedly casting votes for Adlai,

henceforth referred to as a "great American statesman" by Democrats

and Republicans including Ike, alike.


Fall River / Quequechan / City, 1952

-faded-

I happened upon an ancient Egyptian

Pharaoh in a dream.

as Pharaohs go he wasn’t a famous one,

although “Famous One”

seemed like a moniker he’d embrace with gusto.

and he wasn’t what one would call authoritative,

but wasn't overly meek, either. a rather bland,

low-level sort-of runofthemill Pharaoh, one might say.

we talked about interior life and about the lies of perspective.

he said he preferred to address things that were substantial at the base.

he emphasized the benefits of stability in heavy-footedness. 

Pharaoh showed me a stone tablet which contained

the slight relief imagery of a cat.

he said: “this cat will travel with me

when I sail across the sea of the dead”.

but here, the dream faded in the manner

of the sliding doors of an elevator.

later, after a splash of faucet water to my face,
I searched through the fragments left behind from the dream
in hopes of finding a better ending.

half-an-hour and two cups later, I could barely recall
the face of Pharaoh, or details in the setting of the scene,

or the process leading to Pharaoh's decision in choosing
that particular cat for the eternal take-along...

INCOMPLETE

-a moment long, long ago comes all too clearly into view-

a baseball poem:

my space of earth is left field;

a baseball game between us and them.

us, being who we are...

the eclectic, hand-chatty Italians

playing on our field. a park.
them, being the swift, indelible Portuguese

who travelled to us from their distance planet

three small-city blocks to the west.

a line drive on a frozen rope I thought could be reached

sank fast and bounced in front of me.

It was a bad hop.

(“bad hop” is a universally accepted baseball term)
this one hit me in the face.

I'm stunned, briefly, but long enough

for the runner on second to reach home and

although it was unnecessary, he decided

to slide across the plate adding another slap to my face.

all that was left to do was lob the ball to the shortstop

as the runner trotted to his bench drawing

over-the-top adulation from his teammates.

damn Portuguese!

my spikes instinctively brush the damp of the left

field grass leveling the divot.

my fist hard-knocks the cowhide pocket just once.

it's an empty pocket and still the limelight glistened.

-why did the poem-writer cross the road-

growing increasingly concerned with social distancing,
yet finding the work in progress pedestrian, I’ll cross the street
to ask the guy in the little grey house what his poems are about;

do dreams come in to play? what makes them tick?

I drew unsubstantiated conclusions from seeing him mowing,

raking and shoveling during the three heaviest seasons when

the landscape needs tending.

his interior lights go on toward dusk like clockwork, and
I've noticed, without being nabbed in the act, framed
photos resting on a mantelpiece with others hanging
on a wall like certificates of award to "the man of the month".

he hasn't been cooking outdoors, although the small, circular
barbecue grill stands waiting, its half-moon lid
locked-down to the cold ash. It's a dark, dark moon, and

once upon every week, large plastic bags are carried out;

black, opaque, arthritic-like nodules bulging from the innards,

listing unceremoniously at the curbstone, blood-red ribbon ties,

knot the openings, keeping the bags tight-lipped, their secrets stuffed inside.

I'll cross the road to knock at his door to seek the answer

to the age old poets' inquiry of:–– "what the hell's goin' on over here"?

-some time ago

I accompanied an old friend to a funeral.

deceased, was his former wife's mother,

the former wife, also my friend.

after the graveside service, those paying their final, final respects
filed into their cars closing the doors to the ceremony.

I expected to do the same.

after a burial you walk away
slowly, but surely and drive to breakfast at the diner.

but my friend stayed behind,
walking the pathways of the little cemetery
considering gravestones while I tagged along
biding my time to reach proper closure of the experience

over a utilitarian diner-plate of eggs over easy and home fries. 

then this:

he stopped to look at a stone.

he looked more intensely here than

he did to any of the other stones.

as to this stone, it’s all in the name etched thereinto.

this is the grave of someone he knew when

she was young and so was he.

he spoke her name aloud to the ether, or, 
to something other than me, questioning
if it was her or somebody unknown with the same name.

but reasoning soon found it certainly was her.

lo, these many years and suddenly there she is
(could be dressed in blue chiffon and slingback pumps)

showing-up dead to an old friend's reunion.

later, I ordered a short stack under a generous spiral
of “Vermont Maid” maple syrup and coffee.