Everyone said: I was your favorite
     We looked exactly alike

Winters, I was your Oochie, Mariooch
Summers, your Huckleberry girl

Elected to get money from you
     for ice cream
I’d bat my eyelashes
     to open your change purse
You’d take out a dime,
     the whole time smiling

Hazelton winters, you’d play golf
     with Gigi, Murphy, Mike
tracking your golf ball oranges
     over snow-crusted greens

Long Beach Beach Haven summers
     you’d walk and walk
to the lighthouse and back
     simple man, few needs

while we’d scatter and pick
     through the huckleberry patch
Mother held the bucket
     We filled the cups

Home from the wars in Germany, Algiers
     you married the girl you’d met blind
made a home for her and her mother
     four daughters, son

You worked in New Jersey through the week
     setting lead, driving linotype
Weekends you’d come back to us and
     Jackie Gleason, Mario Lanza, Bonanza
Saturday nights I’d be rubbing your head
     helping your hair grow back

Then you worked the presses
     night shifts in Wilkes-Barre
driving down ungodly 309
     down Ashley Mountain
past slag heaps always on fire, the
     caved-in road’s pavement collapsing

Born December 24, Natale
     family was everything
Theresa at 14 raising the rest of you —
     you and Fran, Evelyn
     Rex, Ponzi, Karl
     Vinnie, Johnnie, Mish

You walked and walked
     until you couldn’t walk
to the double house daily
     to see Fran and Theresa

Daddy, I hope you’re walking now
from green to luscious green
get in another 36
arc your orange balls
into the pale blue air
make a hole in one
an eagle.