And he made the move
From Brooklyn
To the tony suburbs of Long Island,
But still
He raged at his son:
“What are ya’, a gypsy!?”
As his mother
Went through the
Seasonal outdoors barbecue
The charred meat
Creating a buzz
Among the flies.
And on Saturday mornings
He’d bark at his son
“British Petroleum!”
and like a lapdog
the boy would
rifle through Barron’s,
for the stock’s rise
and fall
when all in all
he was just thinking of
of playing ball.
And to his father
A suit was iconic
Some garment of passage
As he tried to fit his gangly son
And his spastic
Limbs
Into a succession of double-breasted
Monstrosities
As if this could corset him
Into a man
A mensch
Among his peers.
And the three of us
Traveled back
To the ancestral
Grounds
Of Ratner’s
Near the Williamsburg Bridge
And we would
Listen to his father’s
Staged arguments with a dour waiter
A towel draped over his round shoulders
As they haggled
Over a bowl of half sours
The merits of onion bagels
Chewing the chicken fat
In front of two bemused boys.
And on the hot sands of Jones Beach
with his long-in-the tooth
Playboy friend Oscar
(The very one he eloped with
to Miami with on his honeymoon night)
they wore Bermuda shorts
sports jackets
covering their sunken
bare torsos
all those impossible clothes
but yet another summer breeze has come
and my memory goes.
© Doug Holder All Rights Reserved