I was missed.
It was like the old days, you
said, and laughed.
Dinner was a disaster.
Everybody dead drunk by the time
food hit the table. People
were having a good time, a great
time, a hell of a time, until
somebody took somebody
else’s fiancée upstairs. Then
somebody pulled a knife.
But you got in front of the guy
as he was going upstairs
and talked him down.
Disaster narrowly averted,
you said, and laughed again.
You didn’t remember much else
of what happened after that.
People got into their coats
and began to leave. You
must have dropped off for a few
minutes in front of the TV
because it was screaming at you
to get it a drink when you woke up.
Anyway, you’re in Pittsburgh,
and I’m in here in this
little town on the other side
of the country. Most everyone
has cleared out of our lives now.
You wanted to call me up and say hello.
To say you were thinking
about me, and of the old days.
To say you were missing me.
It was then I remembered
back to those days and how
telephones used to jump when they rang.
And the people who would come
in those early-morning hours
to pound on the door in alarm.
Never mind the alarm felt inside.
I remembered that, and gravy dinners.
Knives lying around, waiting
for trouble. Going to bed
and hoping I wouldn’t wake up.
I love you, Bro, you said.
And then a sob passed
between us. I took hold
of the receiver as if
it were my buddy’s arm.
And I wished for us both
I could put my arms
around you, old friend.
I love you too, Bro.
I said that, and then we hung up.
Our First House in Sacramento
This much is clear to me now—even then
our days were numbered. After our first week
in the house that came furnished
with somebody else’s things, a man appeared
one night with a baseball bat. And raised it.
I was not the man he thought I was.
Finally, I got him to believe it.
He wept from frustration after his anger
left him. None of this had anything to do
with Beatlemania. The next week these friends
of ours from the bar where we all drank
brought friends of theirs to our house —
and we played poker. I lost the grocery money
to a stranger. Who went on to quarrel
with his wife. In his frustration
he drove his fist through the kitchen wall.
Then he, too, disappeared from my life forever.
When we left that house where nothing worked
any longer, we left at midnight
with a U-Haul trailer and a lantern.
Who knows what passed through the neighbors’ minds
when they saw a family leaving their house
in the middle of the night?
The lantern moving behind the curtainless
windows. The shadows going from room to room,
gathering their things into boxes.
I saw firsthand
what frustration can do to a man.
Make him weep, make him throw his fist
through a wall. Set him to dreaming
of the house that’s his
at the end of the long road. A house
filled with music, ease, and generosity.
A house that hasn’t been lived in yet.
Next Year
That first week in Santa Barbara wasn’t the worst thing
to happen. The second week he fell on his head
while drinking, just before he had to lecture.
In the lounge, that second week, she took the microphone
from the singer’s hands and crooned her own
torch song. Then danced. And then passed out
on the table. That’s not the worst, either. They
went to jail that second week. He wasn’t driving
so they booked him, dressed him in pajamas
and stuck him in Detox. Told him to get some sleep.
Told him he could see about his wife in the morning.
But how could he sleep when they wouldn’t let him
close the door to his room?
The corridor’s green light entered,
and the sound of a man weeping.
His wife had been called upon to give the alphabet
beside the road, in the middle of the night.
This is strange enough. But the cops had her
stand on one leg, close her eyes,
and try to touch her nose with her index finger.
All of which she failed to do.
She went to jail for resisting
It was like the old days, you
said, and laughed.
Dinner was a disaster.
Everybody dead drunk by the time
food hit the table. People
were having a good time, a great
time, a hell of a time, until
somebody took somebody
else’s fiancée upstairs. Then
somebody pulled a knife.
But you got in front of the guy
as he was going upstairs
and talked him down.
Disaster narrowly averted,
you said, and laughed again.
You didn’t remember much else
of what happened after that.
People got into their coats
and began to leave. You
must have dropped off for a few
minutes in front of the TV
because it was screaming at you
to get it a drink when you woke up.
Anyway, you’re in Pittsburgh,
and I’m in here in this
little town on the other side
of the country. Most everyone
has cleared out of our lives now.
You wanted to call me up and say hello.
To say you were thinking
about me, and of the old days.
To say you were missing me.
It was then I remembered
back to those days and how
telephones used to jump when they rang.
And the people who would come
in those early-morning hours
to pound on the door in alarm.
Never mind the alarm felt inside.
I remembered that, and gravy dinners.
Knives lying around, waiting
for trouble. Going to bed
and hoping I wouldn’t wake up.
I love you, Bro, you said.
And then a sob passed
between us. I took hold
of the receiver as if
it were my buddy’s arm.
And I wished for us both
I could put my arms
around you, old friend.
I love you too, Bro.
I said that, and then we hung up.
Our First House in Sacramento
This much is clear to me now—even then
our days were numbered. After our first week
in the house that came furnished
with somebody else’s things, a man appeared
one night with a baseball bat. And raised it.
I was not the man he thought I was.
Finally, I got him to believe it.
He wept from frustration after his anger
left him. None of this had anything to do
with Beatlemania. The next week these friends
of ours from the bar where we all drank
brought friends of theirs to our house —
and we played poker. I lost the grocery money
to a stranger. Who went on to quarrel
with his wife. In his frustration
he drove his fist through the kitchen wall.
Then he, too, disappeared from my life forever.
When we left that house where nothing worked
any longer, we left at midnight
with a U-Haul trailer and a lantern.
Who knows what passed through the neighbors’ minds
when they saw a family leaving their house
in the middle of the night?
The lantern moving behind the curtainless
windows. The shadows going from room to room,
gathering their things into boxes.
I saw firsthand
what frustration can do to a man.
Make him weep, make him throw his fist
through a wall. Set him to dreaming
of the house that’s his
at the end of the long road. A house
filled with music, ease, and generosity.
A house that hasn’t been lived in yet.
Next Year
That first week in Santa Barbara wasn’t the worst thing
to happen. The second week he fell on his head
while drinking, just before he had to lecture.
In the lounge, that second week, she took the microphone
from the singer’s hands and crooned her own
torch song. Then danced. And then passed out
on the table. That’s not the worst, either. They
went to jail that second week. He wasn’t driving
so they booked him, dressed him in pajamas
and stuck him in Detox. Told him to get some sleep.
Told him he could see about his wife in the morning.
But how could he sleep when they wouldn’t let him
close the door to his room?
The corridor’s green light entered,
and the sound of a man weeping.
His wife had been called upon to give the alphabet
beside the road, in the middle of the night.
This is strange enough. But the cops had her
stand on one leg, close her eyes,
and try to touch her nose with her index finger.
All of which she failed to do.
She went to jail for resisting
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