Christopher Columbus Park.(New poems)(Brief Article)(Poem)

 
Christopher Columbus Park 
 
   Checkers, bocce, some days rummy or hearts, 
   early fall under chestnut trees. Then winter, 
   inside the rec center, bingo and widows 
   while snow dazes 8th St.'s traffic lights. 
   Summer, finally, Mikey and Sal 
   warm themselves in beach chairs on the grass. 
   Sticky sunshine, stoagies, Phillies games 
   quacking from transistors, dago red 
   dispensed from crystal altar-boy cruets 
   going up in smoke. Some days, 
   in pressed t-shirts, Sal played sweet potato, 
   Mikey the mandolin, bald heads nodding 
   like tulips. Why wasn't I surprised 
   by its senselessness, the word we used 
   to justify what happened, anything 
   that happens, childhood friends at odds 
   over money, maybe, or baseball stats, 
   the unions or Democrats, boiling over 
   as usual, nose ...