The Whitestone Bridge
Stuck in traffic on the Cross Bronx,
fingers drumming the steering wheel
in my compact Caddy SUV, my gripes
are many, numerous as splint nails,
that is, if I tried to total the number of nails
split on both hands in the past 20 years,
even though I’ve taken biotin, good for hair
and nails, for the past 15. My gripes,
as numerous as snakes in grass along
a path I like to walk, as clear as false teeth
in a glass of water on a table at the bedside
of Al Roth, who’d wake, throw them in,
and shoulder a brown leather bag as he
walked house to house delivering mail,
for some scented love letters, for others
the gas bill or, (this was pre-Medicaid), a bill
from the anesthesiologist. Ever try asking
a doctor about money? “Oh,” he says,
or she or they, “you’ve got to talk to them
up front.” At present I’m stalled, I’m right
in the middle. I remember what my dad
used to say, “It’s moving.” At a snail’s pace.
In my lane toward the Whitestone, the other
the GW, (George Washington of the one
dollar bill and Valley Forge. Also, I learned
in fourth grade, he crossed the Delaware,
a river.) Off the GW you’re on Route Four,
with its billboards for Earl Scheib collision
repair, Copper-tone lotion, Thom McAn
shoes, Piels beer, and Camel smokes. Only now they can’t advertise tobacco.
Up from the billboards and shops, a ridge
of woods, and the boneyard where Al
Roth’s remains lie. Maybe they buried him
with his leather bag, I wasn’t there for Al,
though I was for Art Vaught, my dad’s
dad. I’m Art Vaught the third. What did you
learn in school today? The teacher wrote
my name on the board in blue magic marker.
When I was in school they only had chalk.
I’m not going back there, Route Four,
I mean. I’m headed, at a snail’s pace,
towards the Whitestone, into Brooklyn,
to look around, maybe meet a man my age
with the surname Vaught on a name-tag
on his shirt and find we’re distant relatives.
On my radio, the Five Stars of Evil’s heavy
metal number “Graveyard by the Sea.”
Al Roth passed before heavy metal, passed
about when the Beatles hit the U.S.
I’m here with “us” motorists. It’s moving,
my dad said, Art Vaught the second.
Maybe Al on his deathbed said to his son,
he left two, and a wife and a daughter,
“I’m going toward the inevitable.” Then
slipped into a coma. My big gripe is Why
can’t we live forever. The Isley Brothers
sang of forever. They lived in Teaneck,
off Route Four. Some wouldn’t want to live
forever, I realize. Everybody’s different.
___
7/30/2024
Peter Mladinic most recent book of poems, House Sitting, is available from the Anxiety Press. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, United States.
