Category: My poems

What I Would Give For What We Had

In Lenox, Massachusetts, on the picturesque corner
of Main and Housatonic Streets,
is a building with walls made of butter-yellow brick.

Looking up from the sidewalk to the second floor,
you can see the windows
through which my family used to see the world.

There was a drop ceiling in the den that gave way
under the weight of rainwater,
dousing my grandfather as he removed a sodden panel,

standing on a chair to get a better grip, while lightning
lit the windows of the pharmacy below.
There is a shop that sells art photos and gourmet chocolate

where the garage used to be. “Home again, home again
jiggety jig,” my grandmother would say
every time. Back when she used to ride in the car, back when

she used to have places to go. I am so old I can remember her
driving herself, the modern woman, cigarette
fashionably cradled by elegant fingers, red nails catching

the sun that elsewhere lit trees on our famous hills.
It was only in the leaving that I realized
the loss, only in the black-and-white grandeur of deco

living rooms and dancing at the Crystal Ballroom.
Now I would trade anything for that place,
that time, those days when a street corner was the world
and all I knew was safe and protected within it.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Another poem for my wife.

The Oak Tree
(for Jennifer)

I had already asked you three times
you’d wisely declined
I was too young, too unproven
played the saxophone in a latin jazz band
you repaired houses for the poor
we each made barely enough to pay the rent

the fourth time was under an oak tree
at your mother’s house
you finally agreed, throwing caution
to the Pennsylvania wind
we were back East on a rare trip
to see our families, to display one another

that tree had been there for years and years
since the fields next to the dairy farm
were turned into a housing development
for upwardly mobile college professors
whose daughters spoke two languages
and traveled the world on the way to good lives

no one thought we’d last
they all said I was too young, too unproven
played the saxophone in a latin jazz band
couldn’t provide for you
all those beautiful 1950s sentiments
born of monochrome evenings with the Cleavers

but under that oak tree —
a sign of stability, of permanence —
you agreed to place a bet on the long shot
I held your hands as a stray leaf fell,
like your resistance, to rest
in the lush green grass behind the houses

after you said yes
we traveled north to my parents’ house
my mother gave me a wedding ring
that had been her grandmother’s
granting us her blessing
even though she doubted our future

the oak tree is gone now,
cut down by your mother
all these years I’d thought she hated what it represented
only found out this week that it was damaged
in an ice storm and had to be cut before it fell
so many things misunderstood