Tuesday Poem: Published in The Passaic County Community College Anthology in 1989

Black Dress Poem

  Isn't it a bitter thing to think of him floating that way...

  and no one to keen him but the black hags that do be flying

  on the sea.                         

                                                J. M. Synge

                                               Riders To The Sea

Daddy, I used to smell your T-shirts

lying so white in the drawer,

as I put the laundry away,

long thoughtful breaths,

leafing nervously

through the old photographs,

you kept hidden under the socks,

looking for clues.

It was my secret ritual,

leaning against the foot board

of the pineapple-poster marriage bed

that had always been too small for you.

Pictures of you as a young Marine

in bar after bar surrounded by friends,

their faces so many smiling moons

held close by your gravity, some Rita

Hayworth woman on your arm.

The eight by ten

Mommy talked about

through gritted teeth:

Lola with the long red nails

who was crazy for you

but wouldn't have suited the family.

My father the Admiral's Orderly,

with a mustache and a forty five,

dressed in your battle tuxedo:

an open pack of Camels

your boutonniere.

It would have been impossible then

to imagine that you stood

on the rim of a bottomless well

that would eventually swallow you,

or that your children would have to turn

their backs on you to save themselves.

Daddy, all the years you kept from sinking,

by pouring a sea of beer down your throat,

I searched for you everywhere,

despite the shadows. I want to tell you,

I saw you, I saw you, even though

a curtain hung between us:
too heavy for me to lift.