THE BOY GETS SAD

when we come to this point each year,
when he has to say thanks and good bye,
when he knows it will be another year
before we travel to the South to see you
and spend a week living with you.

You’d be the perfect image
if they were still allowed to show
the Marlboro Man in commercials.
Solitary cowboy, hard working, fearless.
Living your life, on your terms,
not having to answer to anyone.

“At this point, I don’t miss many things”
is what you tell us when we all ride together
alongside all the acres of property,
the multiple homes, packed barns, garages.

You are tired now, five in the morning
way too early, you sleep in your chair easily
so when the dark comes you finish your nap,
try not to think about the next seventy days.
You will put up the fight of your life, again.
Harvesting the crops you are proud of and
then you’ll wonder why you put yourself through it.

Next year, we hope to see you again
and we know that we are one of the things
that you truly miss as we are about to drive away.
And this time I make sure that I hug you too,
because it may be the first time, it could be the last.
And I don’t want to say that I never hugged my father.

ON THE WATER, IN THE WATER

eight gray inflatable rubber rafts
like the ones you see on commercials
for joining the Army to “be all you can be”.
Only these rafts are full of happy people
who may be getting burnt by the sun
or drenched by the rapids of this river.

All the safety talks and lectures couldn’t
stop the fat teenage boy from falling out
with another guy into the dark brown water
the guide jokingly referred to as Yoo Hoo.

When the two men bobbed in the water
and didn’t get rescued right away,
it was clear they didn’t know what to do
and had forgotten the “swimmer’s position”.

Panic overtook big boy as he got pulled
further downstream from his raft and
his family looked just as helpless as he did.

After much struggle, another raft pulled him aboard
by his life vest and the boy belched a loud sound
a strange mixture of polluted water and air.
Soon he was laughing, claiming it was cool and
a lot of fun, but we all know he was embarrassed.
Ashamed to have been the one to fall out
of the raft and face a fear that he wasn’t expecting.
He hiked at his pants to cover his underwear
and the crack of the huge backside that almost drowned.

ON THE PIGEON RIVER

in a tent by the side of the river,
be sure to listen carefully
in case you fall out
or get thrown by the rapids.

White plastic helmets, flotation devices, oars
onto the bus, all sitting like players from
some minor league hockey team headed out
onto the highway to play our archrivals in Waterville.
But this bus, packed full of people on summer vacation,
children, grandfathers, moms, and dads is headed
to ramps to launch us down a once polluted river
that becomes full of rapids four days a week,
dams open to make power for the people of the Smoky Mountains.

Whitewater is a byproduct of the electric
and years of cleaning up a paper company’s dumping
into the waters of North Carolina and then the flow
for many decades into East Tennessee and
cancer levels soared in all the little river towns.

Now we paddle on, marveling at its beauty,
taking orders from the tour guides that some would call
hippies, dead heads, granola heads, or back to nature folk.
Our guide is from Arkansas and looks the part,
sandals, Hawaiian shirt, mountain man beard,
a resume of adjunct professor, wildlife management officer, and
river rafting guide to any group that will keep him busy in the water.

Rapids are numbered on a scale of 1 to 5,
based on the possibility of injury, or death.
as you’re going downstream, guides announce
the nicknames of the drops, falls, and water activity-
Snap Dragon, Rock and Roll, Lost Tour Guide, Accelerator, Veg –o-Matic
Going down this river year after year, you remember
names, anecdotes, jokes told about this rafting experience.

Kids like the splashing,
the possibilities of getting thrown.
Others, like me, enjoy the quiet stretches
when no one is saying anything,
just looking up to the sky,
the canyon of trees,
the birds on the river bank
and their children smiling from ear to ear
as we drift down the Pigeon River.

NATURE TRAIL

Red flowers
growing in threes
by the creek side
on the trail
cut through a forest
for you to get
closer to nature.
Posts with
painted on numbers
placed alongside
certain trees,
if its number 7,
then consult
your pamphlet
to figure out
if the tree is
a poplar or hemlock
or you can just
walk along with
your eyes and ears
wide open.
Not worrying
about the names
or labels of
all the living things
that is pleasing
to the eye
and fragrant
to your mind.
But I still want to know that the red flower is called a columbine.

IF I HAD TURNED BACK

IF I HAD TURNED BACK
halfway on this trail,
I would not have seen the falls.
I would not have felt the cool, rough rocks.
I would not have heard the rushing waters
turn to a trickling at the edge of this vast mountain.

If I had turned back halfway on the trail,
I would not have seen you deep in thought
writing about the world we are fortunate to
pass through once a year, every summer.
I confirm my faith in you when I see you
drinking in the surroundings unspoiled by the humans.

I am thankful for the sweet smelling breezes
and the clear skies of June.
I am pleased to gaze for a little while
at the famous smoke hovering above
these great mountains and foothills.
I am content to stare at the patterns
found in leaves, fallen trees, caterpillar markings.

I don’t wear my watch.
I don’t know what time it is.
I don’t know what day it is either.
When I look up I expect to see someone
watching me, but the rocks, mountain laurel and trees
aren’t looking at me and if they were, they wouldn’t care.
I ask myself, why do you deprive yourself from this place all year?
but the real question is-
would I admire or savor this place
so much if I came to this spot in the woods each day?

IT WAS A GREAT APARTMENT

just one block off the beach,
but it was above a law office with
hours that had it open from 9 to 5.
Little kids and babies couldn’t run
or make noise during the day.
This is what Nana told her friends.

She took the grandchildren to the beach
in baby carriages piled and rigged
with chairs, towels, beach bags, toys
and a styrofoam ice chest filled with
lunches and snacks of nectarines, plums,
cream cheese and olive sandwiches,
vienna fingers, sugar wafers, Ring Dings,
Pecan Sandies, greasy Wise potato chips,
licorice, taffy Bats, and Good n’ Plenty.

This is where her grandchildren played
in the sand with their seasonal friends
and the other families from all over
the country and Montreal too.
And every year they all returned
to this same patch of sand at the foot of
Decatur Street, next to Frank’s Playland.
Fifty cent hotdogs, frozen Cokes, or
bright red Pennsylvania Dutch birch beer.
And those crinkle cut fries that the gulls
like to swoop down and steal from
the zinc oxide painted children of the
unsuspecting shoebies or bennies.

Our grandmother came to this spot for thirty years
and she got old with her Cape May friends.
They talked, laughed all day, and lingered
in the hot sun by the water’s edge and
when it came time for her to pass away,
in her bed, her last words were a message
to her late husband about getting the beach chairs ready.
Eventually the friends passed away and were replaced
by new members of the beach club across from
Sid’s , Gloria’s, and the Marquis de Lafayette.

And when I return, after moving on,
I am all grown up and in my early thirties.
It comes to my surprise to find one
of the old guys still left, holding onto his spot
even though his old friends are long gone.
He still wears his Yankees hat with a beach tag
pinned to the side and he still reads his paper,
The Newark Star Ledger, from front to back.

When I call his name he rises slowly from his
green, white, and yellow webbed beach chair
that has him sitting six inches above the sand.
At that moment, the noon hour fire alarm sounds
and he checks his watch before he looks to me
and of course I have to introduce myself after
a dozen years being gone from this beach.
I stood before him, holding my two year old son
and all the man could think of saying is that
he remembered me but couldn’t believe how big
I had gotten but that I still looked the same.

Well, I am thirty two now.

The years just slipped away.
I’m the only one left. I still keep coming back.
It’s noon you know, and I’m headed to lunch.

Off he strolled with his paper under his armpit,
down by the water, where its so much cooler
and easier to walk on the wet sand instead of
the white stuff trucked in last fall to combat erosion.
I watched him go, moving pretty quick for an old guy.
Must’ve been hungry or maybe our brief conversation
threw him off his rigid schedule that kept him living.

Good to see you too is what I muttered to myself as
I tried to understand why I felt so dissappointed
and I attempted to figure out what I thought he’d say.

SOON YOU ARE SPEEDING

in your little green car,
catching up to thoughts and ambitions
racing in your head.
It all comes to a screeching halt
when for the very first time,
you look back in the rearview mirror,
red and blue sirens flash and
a police cruiser is on your bumper
flying at 70 mph, and now you remember
all those years riding in the backseat
hearing about radar guns, speed traps,
those infamous Fairfield Township cops.

Always trying to raise revenue,
mercilessly writing tickets every weekend.
Overwhelmingly nervous,
you forget how to act.
You reach frantically into the glove box.
License, registration, and insurance card
is what he’ll be wanting.

Stupidly you fumble. You sweat profusely.
You act guilty and when you look back
in the rearview mirror this time, you notice
the patrolman, unsnapping his holster
his fingers twitch like a gunslinger
from “Wild, Wild West” and somehow,
you know to stop, and place your hands
on the dusty and cracked dashboard.

You are speechless.
Except for a few “Yes sirs” and “No sirs”.
All the while thankful to live another day
and pay the ninety dollar ticket.

TAKING THE BACKROADS

can’t use the turnpike or parkway
living in the southwest corner of Jersey,
all roads cut through forests, swamps and
marshlands infested with greenhead flies
somehow attracted to the powerful scent
of rotten eggs and decomposition.

Each bend in the road has a memory of
a farm stand where we bought blueberries,
pole lima beans or butternut squash,
roads where we had conversations about
life’s plans or stories of those long gone.
Sometimes, a moment to stop, take a picture or
have a Yoo-hoo, a Tastykake, a Slim Jim.

On this day, Easter Sunday, I drive for the
first time to the beaches of our childhood
realizing that now I can go there as much as
I want and I no longer have to suffer through
another winter’s exile from the hometown
of my dreams, only this trip I will stop at
Cold Spring Cemetery to stand by his grave
for the first time since the funeral with the
flag draped coffin and the twenty one gun salute.

But now I will stand and stare without crying.
I will remember how he led this family and
managed to keep them together for fifty years.
I will stand and think about how he passed away
so suddenly on that February afternoon in his
bright blue Lazy Boy recliner while watching
his favorite soap opera, “The Days of Our Lives”.
And the most fitting testimonial given would be
that “he was never a problem in life, nor in his death.”