Poem: a distant spo t

1

blue arched in yellow

the gaslight sputtered in the night

a girl pressed her cheek to Dostoyevsky’s

Poor People

and wept

and at so many anarchist meetings

in Stelton

you’d nod off among

rows of would-be

educators

“will she sleep on the back bench?”

2

one night some Italian cobblers

at work under the eaves

blew the roofOFF

a man stood naked among pigeons

and the ruins

and stared out

your father

spirited him to Philadelphia

and you went off to college

first MARRIEDRADCLIFFE

UNDERGRAD

“never leave him alone with the

chambermaid” warned

your New England

3

summer afternoons

I hit against Pete Taggard

who had a live fastball

on the old racecourse by our

mornings, on your advice,

read Dostoyevsky, Turgenev and Chekhov

while you ran for School Committee

in our town – “But after all, Jews

can’t live in Greenwich” –

by the Connecticut sound

you who taught your children how to read

but told no childhood tales

for all the world was Westport

blown from a distant spot