A Tidings of Magpies

for my mother The day the package came from Sears, you were ironing and smoking, in the one slab of light that elbowed in between our three-decker and the next one. World Series Time, and the radio bobbing on the square end of the board told over what you already knew: The Sox are the same old bunch of bums! you said, slamming the iron into some navy gabardine; the smells of workclothes—Tide and oil—rose up together in steam around you, like the roar of the crowd at Fenway and the shouts, downstairs, of Imalda, getting belted around her kitchen at noon. Some people can make anything out of anything else. If you still can, remember that day like this: you douse your cigarette and squat down close; I open the box addressed only to me and find inside the pair of sandals you call harlequin , with straps as many colored as a life. I am happy. You buckle them on me. Every room is dark but where we are. Every other room is empty.

Could not have have gotten through these last twenty - one years without you. Love ya, need ya, mean it.