At my hometown
reunions come and go
revelry wanes between Jersey Shores
long since I left sidewalks and sycamores
yet right there inside where I can’t hide
a bucolic town that no longer exists
persists, devouring our greenbelt
kissing the Northeast megalopolis
I heard you called old friend
somewhere between obits and deadline
emailed, texted, scripted
churned my intestines
over the tides and continents
to say I know it isn’t easy but come home
the Wall on Nassau Street still has your name on it
the Playhouse off Palmer Square remembers your first date
excuses vanish at Kimball’s Funeral Home
where everyone is special
and no one is too soon
You think you left this place
I know I have but I waited for you
forgave you
in July’s humid foggy ambivalence
ice-packed winter cognitive dissonance
thick enough for hockey on Carnegie Lake
I’m not playing hard to get here
we are a revolving door you and me
I protested atomic-bomb testing
studied Jung at Frick Hall amphitheater
howled in the End Zone at Palmer Stadium
dinged one over the fence at the YMCA
jumped into high-piled autumn leaves
met Tom Rush and Gordon Lightfoot at McCarter
slipped into the side door at the Garden Theatre
what did YOU do?
scalp tickets at the Giants/Eagles exhibition game?
par Springdale where I used to caddie?
picnic under the oak where Mercer fell in battle?
In ragged orange and white stripes
this townie still wants a Bengal-tiger tattoo
nostalgic for folk songs in church-basement coffeehouses
until PU students introduced LSD and then heroin
to high-school pals we buried too soon
cursing, cursed, no distance was far enough
spared by college and a 3-digit lottery number
when Vietnam took war’s unfair share
What happened to so and so?
the valedictorian off to new highways
out West to Maynard Dixon sunsets
trekking misty hilltops on Italy’s backbone
surfing Portugal’s Silver Coast
we swam under the Dinky Train trestle
fished picnicked and panicked busted
parked under summer’s sickle moon
ran the towpath along the canal to Kingston
drank glogg and skated on Christmas Day
St. Paul’s parking lot was our schoolyard
summers we sweltered in jackets and ties
fought bare fisted played tackle no gear
shivered at girls in garnet uniforms
peekaboo pleats and ponytails
kissed behind the garage and hunched
under the yardstick of Sisters of Mercy,
marched two-by-two, faith in dogma or fear
of corporal punishment and fire for eternity
I go back and leave again and remain
in the same pecking order as before
our grandparents sleep behind that church
Mom and Dad across town, cheek by jowl
with Aaron Burr Grover Cleveland and John O’Hara
where we collected acorns and drove go-carts
around sepulchers off Witherspoon Street
I planted two cherry trees for them
but one didn’t make it to spring and neither did I
one foot out of town and one behind that cast-iron fence
I don’t love you anymore old home
ticking time-bomb of juvenile years
drop the Princeton pretense
do not look over my shoulder
at the visceral and virginal
one seminal senior on the porch
neither pejorative nor rhetorical
underscores these echoes
telling the person who lives in this body
welcome back where I never left
— Pepper Provenzano
Born and raised in Princeton, Pepper Provenzano lives and writes in New Jersey, Arizona and Utah.
