Ray Cicetti
Ray Cicetti's poems have been published in a variety of journals including Tiferet, Exit 13, The Galway Review and Stillwater Review. His book " A Forest in His Pocket" was published in 2020. He lives in northern New Jersey.
Leon
Each day on my way to class, Leon would be
chatting with strangers in front of his record shop
on Broad Street in Newark.
In his floppy felt hat, bellbottom pants
and red love beads, he’d smile and flash
the peace sign to those passing by.
At age 19, in 1969, the city was on fire and I
was a question mark, wondering what this world
was trying to be with its need to change me.
His store was a refuge.
On Monday’s Leon would play the Mama’s and Papa’s
Monday, Monday, and James Browns’ Live at the Apollo
over and over. And as I scrolled through his stacks of LP’s
he’d ask what music I listened to and why?
What did I think about the Vietnam war, and street protests?
What was college teaching me about life? Questions no one
in my family asked. My mother called him a moulinyan—
my father didn’t know I went there.
Once I noticed Leon, head thrust up in abandon—his one
lazy eye wandering off to wherever, enthralled by the sounds of the city.
He would sing, the world is made of music. It is memory and magic,
then he played Both Sides Now by Judy Collins, which like my world,
was heartbreaking and hopeful.
He’d shake his head and say: Ya got to make your own way man.
Seasons passed, I made my own way, and the record shop is long gone.
But I carry him with me when I listen again to Both Sides Now,
warmed by the fire of memory.
To My Brother
I watched my neighbor close his door
and thought about you—how we lived
at opposite ends of each other’s lives
and so long ago closed the gate between us.
Time and neglect have done their work,
that gate in such disrepair, I’m not sure it will open.
Yes, it was me, who in anger, practiced the art
of riding the wind into remote places.
Yes, it was you, who in anger,
tried to bend it to your will.
And where I met conflicts with silence—
you answered every bell with a need to win.
We ran from each other spun out from our own isolation.
We drew our maps so they never touched—
defeated by our own shadows.
There are days I imagine I visit you—
(though I don’t know where you live).
You alone in front of your T.V,
back bent from the weight
of so much winning.
Let’s not speak a word, I say,
until all sides disappear.
Someone told me, an unbreakable thread,
that connects us all runs through this life,
even through memories, incorrect and fierce.
I pick it up, I offer it to you.
Wisteria
I told myself it was the right thing to do
as the landscapers began to remove
the vines that had splintered our fence
and wrapped around our trees, killing them off.
Those vines are determined to thrive, one of the men said.
And I thought about the vine’s beautiful slow violence—
it’s insistent growth around and through every obstacle—
its lilac panicles, cascading through the tree tops toward the open sky,
not for my sake (or yours) but to live.
I stood a long time in a slip of sunlight,
considering my own resilience:
My tendency to stay in the small rooms of yes and no—
To hold tenaciously to my points of view,
the way I linger inside familiar shapes.
I recalled a teacher’s words: resilience is water moving over stone,
and I thought, perhaps this is what suffering is,
to not find delight in life’s flowing nature or extend my reach beyond what I know.
And when the slow applause of the chain saws quieted,
one of the men pointed out that some vines
were still alive in our neighbor’s yard. Wisteria, he said, adapts,
and grows back. And suddenly loving its wild and fierce beauty,
I wanted it to.