the drive seemed to be endless,
and my mother seemed to be lost.
in Norwich, on the northernmost edge
of our secluded world.
it was Christmas Eve,
and we were trying to find a holday party
that we were actually invited to.
a party with promises
of gifts- to fill the void
of tomorrows anticipated vacancy.

we eventually found the house,
and my mother pulled off an incredible parallel parking maneuver
in the snow and ice, on the slight hill.
it didn’t seem that we knew anyone at this party, uncomfortable
to the extent that even being given a
gift seemed like charity.
my mother prided herself in not giving in. on this night, it seemed as if we were.
it never happened again.

in town, there was a famous
Christmas Night party, which I was
now old enough to participate in.
i had just. enough. status.
to be invited.

the first guest I would encounter had an original screenplay in production.
in Hollywood.
that afternoon was the first time my step-father let me drink beer with him-
a conference with both elements of our families that
became a rallying cry between the two of us.
for the first time, we had an unspoken certainty,
that found it’s conclusion in his reassuring words:

“have another. you’ll be fine”

my father and his first roommate, after leaving home,
collected miller lite cans from the first sunday
of football season, until the holidays- their goal
was to decorate an entire tree in nothing but
miller lite cans
as part of a contest
for the brewing magnate.
they stole two shopping carts from the local supermarket
to store four months of empties,
before they were to deliberately hang each can
from a proper, ornament hook.

i had to be escorted out at 11.30 pm
from the party. beyond drunk ….
passed out on the “dance floor.”

i was thinking to myself, after a bleak sunrise-
“you have embarrassed everyone!”
there certainly were more elegant ways to leave a lasting impression.
but wasn’t that the point? to make a mark?

i would never be invited to the party again.
i could hardly blame them.

i was in my room
preparing a self-addressed stamped envelope
to Magic Johnson
requesting his autograph. i wasn’t even sure why,
other than he was Magic.
Celtic playoff games were the one time
my father let us stay up past our bedtime,
a specific
benefit
of being a child of divorce.

the older kids in the neighborhood taught me how to collect autographs.
there was a specific way you needed to write the letter, and how the envelope should be addressed.
these guys had Pete Rose autographs, so surely i should believe in their process.
i decided to follow the same procedure in my attempt to procure Magic’s autograph,
which was certainly to be a victory within
our small collectors group.
Magic happened to be a fixture of the Celtic’s rival team.

As I wrote the address of the LA Forum on my humble request,
the smell of smoke began to fill the room. I was on the second floor
of our house. instinctively, i knew my brother was up to no good.

he had decided to warm up last night’s pizza
within the confines of it’s paper box, in an oven set to 300 degrees.
by the time I realized we had an emergency on our hands, I raced out to the garage
to fetch a pitchfork, as it seemed the most likely tool
to remove a burning pizza box
from an electric oven.

balancing the fire on a pitchfork.
i was able to lay it to rest on a small concrete pad in our backyard,
the remnants of a grill that my parents
had brought to ground level
after my brother lodged his head in the chimney one autumn afternoon.

my mother left work at the nursing home
at exactly the same time that I had placed the burning box
on concrete in our suburban back lawn,
which we were clinging to

by the time she took a left turn at the head of our street,
and then passed within sight of our house- smoke was
pouring out of the open front door, an escape clause I had established hoping to
hide the disaster from her.

years later, I found out she had simply drove the car for another four blocks, to the elementary school
on our street, before turning the car around to address our catastrophe.

“let those kids burn…….” she told me, with the conviction of a thousand yard stare.

how could I blame her?
fortunately,
i had extinguished the fire.

my father was an umpire
in his words –
“a god between the foul lines”
his was an empirical stance-
not afforded to many in their day to day

i had not played a real baseball
game in fourteen years. my younger
brother was on the roster for a team
in the local beer league,
and since he couldn’t make it to the
next game,
and since I shared his last name,
would I be interested in filling
the roster spot? they were facing the prospect
of forfeit if I did not take the place of him
to field nine.

i agreed, expectations of success driving my
train of thought. Mark agreed to drive us to the game,
after all-I was doing him a favor by pretending
to be my younger brother, as he was himself.
It was a huge mistake.

as I warmed up in deep right field,
the team’s manager asked me as “Jeremy” which positions I could play.
“2nd Base, and both corner outfield positions” was my simple reply.
acquiescence to the most basic need of a any baseball team is paramount.
I began to long toss in the outfield to stretch out my arm-
in case I was to play there.
i then saw the umpire call our manager over
for a pre-game conference.

the umpire informed our manager that any player
entering the field who was not eligible to play
would result in a forfeit for that team.
my own father was taking the last chance of playing baseball from me
on a technicality. It was his adherence to the rules.

i was relegated to picking up
bats in the on deck circle
for nine innings, coming within feet of my father
without a mere nod

after the game, as I changed cleats to shoes,
he passed by the car I had arrived in
without a glance askew
it was the last time I saw him alive

each day of stasis
illustrates the depth of our
forced cataclysm

individuals
response articulates our
new reality

my forecast dictates
a renewal in July
and it’s influence

the reconstruction
is nearly complete. fortune
begat vacancy

user is private
what could you be hiding from?
a resignation?

our chance meeting was
determined by elements
beyond our control

a stake in the new
proposal, a strike against
cautious wherewithal

serendipitous
the vocal reality
enacts perfection

careful and vacant
the acceptance of the soon
future. a failure

the afterparty
revealed shortcomings we were
incapable of

some friends were on their way over to the house.
a communique revealed they were running late,
so I gave them my landline phone number
in case they needed to get in touch.
i have had the number for thirty years, a teen
being acquiesced to when I desired my own phone number
in the ninth grade. a pinnacle of individual identity.

the phone rang tonight, rare in this era of cell towers and
invisible connection.
it must be a robocall, or so I thought

“hello sir, we’d like to ask you about the fishing habits of the household.”

hello, hello, hello, hello, hello

“yes, sir. I’m really here.”

i decided to turn the tables, and asked her about her fishing habits.
i had never had a grand experience pulling a fish from it’s natural habitat.
my father’s best friend was an avid fisherman, and those trips down the river
or to the far cove always seemed to get in the way of perfecting the pivot
at second base, or interrupting the most recent plea for a drum set.
she was so surprised that I had begun to inquire about her background, that she
immediately responded with a concise description of her involvement.
“i like to fish from the shore, not so much from a boat. but I’m still like a
little girl when I have to put the bait on the hook, or pulling the hook out of the fish.”

“why do you have to define that moment within the supposed weakness of femininity?
i’m petrified of putting a worm on a hook, much less scaling a dead animal. why don’t you say
‘scared, like a little boy?’ “

“you’re right…..
but I still have to do this survey……”

i responded by saying “you have sixty seconds”

she gets the answers her superiors are looking for in forty seven seconds.
“thank you sir, that was the best call I have ever had.”

I hang up the phone and wait for the sound of tires grinding
the last of the winter’s sand in a slow stop
before the driver puts the vehicle into park.