Every Sunday morning my father chomped on an onion
bagel behind the Business Section of the New York Times,
slurped a cup of tepid Instant Maxwell House
laced with two pink packets of Sweet ‘N Low,
then clinked his cup into his saucer and rose
with a sigh like a man who knew he had a job
to do. “Think I’ll go visit my Uncle Harry,” he said,
as if this bright idea had just popped
into his head. He never wanted company
on those twenty-minute treks from Jericho
to Great Neck, never spoke a word
upon his four o’clock return.
Great Uncle Harry never spoke either.
For thirty years he lay on the living room couch
hands curled like seashells
body a lump of heavy wet sand
big blue ocean eyes staring
at the sky above the ceiling above
his great unmoving head
which he’d cracked open by falling
backwards the day he couldn’t wait
for the elevator and took the stairs instead.
For thirty years every Sunday morning
my father went to visit his mother’s baby
brother, the only person left
on earth who knew him back in Brighton Beach
when he was a pale, skinny boy
sprawled in the sand, digging his way
to China which he truly believed he could reach
just as he truly believed every Sunday morning
this would be the day his Uncle Harry would turn
his head, blink his eyes, and finally cry
out in raspy surprise, “Here he is, my Eddie Spaghetti!”
before sitting up, reaching out and folding him in his arms.
Lesléa Newman has created 85 books for readers of all ages including the dual memoir-in-verse, “I Carry My Mother” and “I Wish My Father,” the novel-in-verse, “October Mourning : A Song for Matthew Shepard,” and the illustrated poetic biography, “Always Matt: A Tribute to Matthew Shepard.” She has received poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Artists Foundation and is a past poet laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts.