» Poetry
Reunion Ode
Do I know you, old friend? You were taken
off our asphalt ballgame expanse
where Sorrento and Parma roads met
before we were ten, to the North,
Edmonton, off my map of the world,
before Oswald shot Kennedy. Then,
you’ve told me, it was 40 below
when you landed without a coat, and found
that town’s kids could be heartless
as Philly’s where I stayed with Robert’s
and Elliott’s fists in my face. No escape
for either of us. Maybe you had more
boredom up in that numbing cold,
a near-paralytic stillness of frozen
lakes, cruel monotony of conifers
far as the mind could wander, a father
who knew only to quietly toughen you,
thicken your hide, and couldn’t. Maybe
I wound up more anaesthetized
by barrage, the din of the Market
Street pinball arcades, the ringing
thunder of bowling balls smashing
the pins under 54th Street, under
the roar of the one massive hungry kvetch
in the delicatessen above the lanes,
the howl of the great complaint
that was the real American anthem,
deafening song of never enough
belonging. I’d drift to its screech
refrains on the El down to 69th. How
was it for you? And do you know me,
after all these seasons, your silences
lonely as endless tundra, my screaming
riots of rights marches and acid rock
horror shows? Can we be the friends
we are? You’ve welcomed me
into your house, I see the boy
in the lift of your brow, that considerate
set of your mouth you learned
from your mother, and how you wait
for the kid’s heart to come out and color
the keys when you’re about to play
something for us on piano. You must
pick up on my frightened original
innocence in the blurt-and-pause
of my city-punk talk. And yesterday
when we ambled along the shore toward the old
observatory you showed me, I heard you
wonder as purely as who you were
when we sat on the swings in my yard
and joked, both of us already lost
forever, bedazzled alike under sky
wider than thought, secretly jazzed
to be recognized by one another.