Dancing at Lake Montebello. Lynne Viti

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      Laughter met us as at the landing.

      Empty seats surrounded us.

      I didn’t like to sit far from others

      in a dark theater, even for comedies.

      DewAnn said, We can’t mix.

      We’d already broken one law, no candy inside the movies.

      I felt we might as well break another — but I didn’t say a word.

      After the newsreel, the screen turned to color.

      Every soul in the balcony cheered.

      But I slid down low in my seat,

      stuffed another caramel into my mouth.

      Clifton Park

      I demanded that my mother

      take me back to the park

      with the three swimming pools.

      Summer was hotter then.

      At night fans cooled us down.

      In the days we moved slowly,

      drank iced tea or Kool-Aid.

      I asked her to take me to the city park

      with the three pools, concrete-bottomed, concrete-sided.

      The baby pool, the pool for grown-ups

      the middle one just right for me.

      I waded cautiously into the shallow end,

      watched boys dive into my pool,

      swim like fish through cold water.

      Their skin was dark,

      their hair in dark little whorls in perfect patterns.

      I pestered my mother to take me back.

      She shook her head. Why, I asked. Why not?

      All summer I contemplated the three pools, the boys

      calling out challenges to one another,

      shoving, laughing, scrambling

      onto the pool’s concrete edges.

      Why, I kept asking — Why

      don’t we go back there?

      Polio, she answered.

      And too many city people.

      I understood polio

      but the rest confused me.

      What could be better than

      to be near those boys, their skin glistening,

      their shouts, name-calling, bragging

      in our pool, in our city?

      Labor Day

      It was a day out, a day off.

      They stocked the boat with bait and tackle,

      Luckies and Camels, sandwiches and beer,

      headed for where the bay meets the ocean.

      There were plenty of stripers in those days,

      bonitas, perch when your luck ran out,

      more blues than you could catch and clean,

      supper and then some, all glistening prizes.

      To say something went wrong that day

      is to turn away from the sun on their faces,

      the sun on gray water,

      beer cans they drained, tossed overboard.

      To say something went wrong

      is to ignore the yells when one of them

      startled out of half-sleep.

      The boat stopped drifting, dashed against the bridge.

      I can’t say if there was silence or moans

      as they made way to shore,

      to City Hospital’s green corridors,

      to black telephones to call home.

      My father dragged that leg around for years—

      that natural prosthesis, ankle fused to foot.

      He was early to bed then.

      His arsenal of pills filled the bathroom shelf.

      One day he taught me to hit a softball

      directed my stance, placed my hands on the bat,

      Warned me never to daydream at the plate.

      The Good Father

      The good father fell asleep on Saturdays

      stretched out long on the couch.

      Or he hoisted me onto his shoulders

      or carried me into the ocean,

      keeping a firm grip on me

      which was fine by me.

      The good father took me to church

      let me play with my white prayer book

      with the gold cross hidden in a place inside the cover.

      He pointed to the altar in front

      when the three bells rang —

      the priest held the white circle bread high.

      The good father slept in the big bed

      on white sheets with blue lines.

      He lay next to my mother, slender, dark-eyed.

      Laughter came from their room at night.

      He drove us to Florida in his gray car with three pedals.

      I tried to stand up in the back all the way to Virginia.

      Dirty water came out of the hotel’s faucet in Charleston.

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