Selected Poems
My First Confession
Old man Rossi lived on the corner. Stinking drunk on homemade red wine, he wandered up our empty block one summer Saturday evening. We had decorated the inside of our porch for a party, with colorful flags. Old man Rossi believing our porch was the chapel of St. Thomas. He stopped with a lurch, crossed himself and stumbled up the stairs. Seeing me sitting on the other side of the partition, Old man Rossi genuflected, began a confession by rubbing his stubble chin on the wood.
With a tannin stench of soured grapes, he said his last confession was a year ago. Old man Rossi tearfully whispered and admitted to having an affair with the widow, three doors down. He bowed his head and how much he had wanted to stop but couldn't. Old man Rossi wept bitterly about how Mrs. Rossi never wanted to have children. Reaching through the slats of that old porch fence, to touch his trembling shoulders, I told him how brave he was to come, that his sins were forgiven and go and sin no more.
As the knife sharpening man pushed his cart up the street, he played church songs on an accordion. All the while, his pig-faced son collected the payment coins in an old coffee can. Soon the block had emptied and everyone was back inside to cool, none the wiser to Old man's Rossi's conversion. Old man Rossi quickly mumbled through a penance of confused Pater Marias and Ave Nosters. Old Man Rossi straightened up relieved, smiled, and gratefully wobbled back down the block, to his home.
On Sunday morning, we sat at Mass across from Mr. Rossi, in the second pew. He was clean shaven and smelling of Witch Hazel and was seated next to Mrs. Rossi. The couple smiled and he said he had been touched by Jesus. Mr. Rossi happily served out the rest of his sentence with his wife. The hurdy-gurdy organist played an offertory hymn, monkey face usher collected coins in long handled baskets. I knew the highway to hell and the low, off ramp to heaven, had mile markers made of cassocks and crosiers.
