Poetry Excerpts from Mianus Village
Deep in our subconscious... lie all our memories…
Forgotten debris of forgotten years
Waiting to be recalled…
Waiting for some small, intimate reminder…
An echo from the past…
-- Noel Coward, Nothing Is Lost.
Coming Home
World War II quit
just in time
for daddy. After
fighting its way
up the boot of Italy,
his regiment boarded
a liberty ship in Genoa
bound for Japan.
He was lying
in a hammock smoking
a Camel and feeling
doomed
when the news
crackled through
the James Longstreet’s intercom—
the Japanese had
surrendered. His ship dropped
anchor just east
of Panama Canal
and everyone cut loose
drinking rubbing alcohol cut
with pineapple juice—
“to keep ya from
goin’ blind.” Eight days later,
he skipped
down the gangplank
at the Brooklyn Marine Terminal,
got paid, discharged,
and that night,
believing his luck
had finally changed,
blew $20
for a taxi ride
to Greenwich—
an extravagance my mother
never let him forget. Right away
he moved in
with the in–laws
and became obsessed
with buying a Studebaker,
finding a job and starting
a family—though
not always
in that order.
Mianus Village
A gold coast
hanging on the bank
of a tinsel-glistening river
but nobody knew that in 1946
when the VA
bought the land cheap,
bulldozed a strip through
the green woods,
built 40 matchbox houses
—750 square feet each—
and rented them
to WWII veterans
who couldn’t otherwise
afford a place
in the sun.
Daddy qualified
when he got laid-off
at the nail factory
and we arrived
at this launching pad
of our lives
when I turned two.
That spring mother planted
a bed of purple iris—
whose iridescent petals
brightened our days
and the kitchen table
every summer
of my boyhood.
Within a week,
Daddy cut a gate
in the chain link fence
with pointy tips,
built by the government
to save us
from drowning ourselves.
Nobody died
but Jeffrey Bell
once got seven stitches
in his throat
after bayoneting himself
on a razor-sharp prong—
a foolish
thing for sure
because two black labs
had already dug
a trench beneath
the lower rail
deep enough
for a teenybopper
to do the limbo.
War Brides
Toward the back
of the village,
six wives
lived like sisters
in the springtime
of their lives,
sharing groceries,
Patti Page records
and occasional heartaches.
I can still hear them
reading Dr. Spock aloud,
fretting about polio,
and laughing at Lucille Ball.
In the early 50s,
they stayed home
raising babies,
gathering weekly
for coffee and
their favorite morning show—
Arthur Godfrey Time.
I was shy as a boy
and stuttered
so I liked to sit
quiet as a cat,
my eyes and ears—antennas
of surprise and wonder—
uploading everyday talk
and stories of the big war,
which still brought laughter
and tears to people’s faces.
This one morning
I watched them
squeeze their butts
onto our swayback couch
in front of the TV set,
fanning themselves
with Life magazines
when that Italian heartthrob,
Julius LaRosa,
sang his number one hit,
“Eh Compari.”
When they left, I went
from saucer to saucer
sipping dripped coffee
then sat on the front step,
my heart buzzing
like a bee in a bottle.
Back then,
the world beyond the village
was vague as fog,
that is until the harsh realities
of life showed up.
First, Laura Barnet
died young
of cancer, then Molly Plant
ran away with an
old boyfriend, and one-by-one,
mother’s other girlfriends
began moving
to bigger houses
in better neighborhoods.
She never connected
with the second wave of families
moving into the village
and as the years passed
some people thought her
stuck up. All I saw
was this lioness’ hunger
for her cubs,
not wanting us
to end up poor
like her and daddy,
wearing Thrift Store clothes,
driving beaters,
and whittling our bones away
working for people
with blue blood
in their veins.