Highway 13

This road used to go home.

It’s covered with snow now and doesn’t go anywhere.

It’s just a coal blue line

on an old roadmap

connecting little black dots

where somebody probably still lives.

Some of those days

Nostalgia you want!

Remember the old paper route?   Hoo-hah!

All the dogs along the way.

The customers who never had any money on Fridays

when you came to collect.

The wonderfully warm days.

The freezing cold days.

The paper bag that felt so good on your shoulder

  at the end of the route.

The $35 or so in Christmas presents,

  including the quarter from your “worst” customer.

Remember the beautiful people? And the others,

  who lived on 2nd or 3rd or Fifth, or Frank Ave.?

724 Newton Ave.

There was a feeling then-about 1948 or nine,

of a coziness within heart and home

on a November evening early,

though already black and cold outside.

The perception of it, sight, smell, tactile warmth,

is almost innate, surely imprinted indelibly

on one of the gray convolutions.

Or maybe the feeling is only now,

as I sit in the park in November, and remember.

Elementary Longings

No more paper straws

  for sucking from paper cartons

on the long, low, wooden benches

  in the basement at St. Theodore’s

in the fourth grade.

No more candy

  from the boxes in the cubbyhole

under the stairs, in the hallway,

  under the supervision

of Sister Bonita.

No more songs on Friday afternoon

  from the orange-yellow cards

all together in Loretto Hall

  while we held our breaths the longest.

No more fire drills

  down the stairs on the outside

of the building

  with the jump-down at the end.

Not even a hill to slide down anymore.

Now it’s 1973 and there isn’t even a school there anymore.