Poetry Journal Jan. 8, 2023
email to Al Sullivan
Posts
Birthday wishes Dec. 27. 2023
Today is Garrick’s 74th birthday. His is the middle birthday in a pack that had Hank on Christmas Eve, and Pauly’s on Dec. 28. Garrick used to kid Pauly about they being the same age on Midnight between the two days, although with Pauly’s passing almost four years ago, we have all caught up and passed him by, just as we passed Hank after his passing back in the winter of 1995. Garrick was forced to retire earlier this year when his company finally shut down a parts manufacturer for which he worked for nearly 30 years and had hoped to stretch this to a full 30 years before officially retiring. Oddly enough, his company remained functioning throughout the COVID pandemic, partly because it was seen as “essential” in an era when that word gets misused frequently, though the parts they made apparently were necessary in keeping certain other really essential industries operating. The fact that we have all worked for our respective companies for decades scares me a ...
13 Willow Lane Dec. 26, 2023
I should have remembered the address of where Pauly and Rick lived, during that decade after Pauly moved out of Passaic for the last time. The number and name so completely fitting Pauly’s magical life. If there was any place, I might find Pauly’s lingering ghost it would be on that island where he lived and in the now-abandoned library building where he worked for more than 25 years, cast out by new development and a new library building for which he was no qualified to serve as director. It struck me that we should visit that place only after we had already taken off to visit his last place of residence, where we went each time after his passing. That world around that lake changed dramatically as the town fathers began to realize they could profit from massive new development, especially on the island where the old amusement park once sat, increasing the population to the point where Pauly – because he lacked the degree in library science – would be put out of a job by...
Visiting the graves Dec. 25, 2023
If all goes as planned, we’ll be off to see Pauly today, even though he will have been dead since January 2020. Perhaps thinking of Pauly made me take a tour of family gravesites yesterday, buying flowers for each just as a possible final gesture, since I’m one of the few family members who continue to visit them. I even bought flowers for Peggy’s site, putting them against the Teddy Bear that remains a fixture there despite many months of weather. In some ways, a trip to each of these is a trip into Pauly’s life, since many of my relatives (including my ex-girlfriend, Peggy) are buried near our old stomping grounds in Passaic. I drove to the florist first, knowing that for Christmas it would be open, even though for most of the year it is closed on Sunday. I brought five arrangements for each of the five graves, getting the florist to make up one to stick on the wall of my mother’s above ground tomb. Then, I crossed the street to the historic cemetery where my great gran...