A JOURNEY FOR JOHN BOY

When I am alone,
the hours are larger,
but not as large as
when I can't sleep or dream
in the protracted hours
before dawn.

Behind closed eyelids,
I see lights,
visible like stars,
that sparkle and wane
like the sun and the fireworks
across the bay.

I think of things
that might have been
but never were,
and sculpt reflections
of places and spaces
that vanished and were forgotten
but now seem unforgettable.

I saw Joe DiMaggio in Yankee Stadium,
with my Dad and my brother Joe,
play in his last season of baseball,
with a rookie named Mickey Mantle
at his side.

Across town at the Polo Grounds,
on another day from another train,
we saw a young Willie Mays
bedazzle, with his sheer athleticism,
fans of all colors and persuasions.

Four years later I felt the same surge
when I hit a home run
in the Little League All Star game.
I can still hear the cheers
and feel my parents' pride,
as I rounded the bases.


Manny, at his deli,
smiling and laughing,
as he fixed me a pastami sandwich
with a half-sour pickle,
as I stared at the numbers
etched in his arm.

I see everything and nothing
when I can't sleep or dream.

My nine year old friend
and next door neighbor Billy,
who fell from a motor boat
and drowned in a Connecticut lake,
and now lay,
dressed in a uncharacteristic suit,
in a satin-lined casket
never intended for anyone his age.

The first polio vaccine,
in the shape of bullion cubes,
that I ingested, like jell-o,
because Jonas Salk
found the cure.

My first kiss.

Whiffle ball in my back yard
with my best friend George.

Playing catch with my brother,
before girls changed
the strike zone forever.

I see everything and nothing
when I can't sleep or dream.

The sunken faces
of the fifty year old indentured farm workers
from Jamaica and Puerto Rico
who I picked tobacco with
for .75 cents and hour
when I was 14 years old.

Walter Cronkite and Eric Severide,
when we had real reporters
and real news,
long before
it became unfair and unbalanced.

Rocky Marciano
when he knocked out Joe Lewis
and Cassius Clay
before he was transformed,
like a butterfly,
into Mohammad Ali.

The sickly stench, still in my nostrils,
of the convalescent home
that we visited
every Sunday for two years,
to see my grandmother.
The sound of my grandfather's last breath,
as I stood with my family
by his hospital bed,
when I was 16 years old.

I see everything and nothing
when I can't sleep or dream:

Cheerleaders at my soccer games,
chanting lyrics worthy of a Stephen Sondheim musical:
"what a fella- Piscatella, go John-go.

A young black man
in downtown Hartford Connecticut,
violently draped over the side of a car,
abused and harassed by two policemen,
because he was the wrong color
at the wrong place in time.
The race riots in the north end of Hartford.

The sadness in my mother's eyes
the days that President Kennedy
and then his brother Bobbie
got assassinated on national television.

The golden oratory by,
and the inevitable eulogies for,
Martin Luther King.

I see everything and nothing
when I can't sleep or dream.

Fort Campbell
after enlisting in the Army Reserves for six years.
The plane ride to Kentucky
in the middle of August,
because Canada was too cold
and South East Asia was too hot.

The bus ride, three months later,
to Fort Sill, Oklahoma,
the day of my brother's wedding.
My first , and only, sighting of an armadillo.
My first, and only, granade launcher,
strapped to my shoulder,
like a bad rotator cuff.

The pain I felt
when my fiancee and I changed course.
San Francisco
where I searched
in vain for myself.

Connecticut
where my search ended
at age twenty -four,
when a twenty-one year old girl
named Florine
in a mini skirt
designed by God,
walked by my desk
and into my heart forever.

Oh what a Journey
for John Boy.

A name unsuited to my years,
but affectionately given to me
by my Babe
the day my journey officially began.
The mere sound of it,
even from my own voice,
makes me alive
between paragraphs.

I heard those words
every time she walked through the door.
They were part of a package
that came with a smile and a hug,
and love,
honed to a fineness
that had more meanings
than an orchid or a rose.

I have crossed the universal seas
at both ends of the same day.
Now I am my memory.
Now I sleep.
Now I dream.

Oh what a Journey
for John Boy.


© JOHN PISCATELLA