Brooklyn

They asked if I'd had other girlfriends before
their Mom, and I said, Never, ever.
I was shy and never had a girlfriend, but then
Mom came along and she was very pretty
and laughed at my jokes, so I kissed her on the lips
and we got married. And they said, Really?
and I said, Really.

But they asked me again and one day I said,
Well, almost really. There was one.
And they said, What was her name?
And I said, Shirley Finkelstein,
which made them very merry,
and I told them that she lived in a mystical
place called Brooklyn, an island near New York,
a floating island held anchored to the
land by a beautiful bridge and a tunnel under the
water in which ran a train called Canarsie.

Brooklyn lay in mist, a wild place
all covered by grass as high as a man,
and on the whole island only one tree, and roaming
through the grass wild dogs and crocodiles, and a gang of men,
the Artful Dodgers, with spiked shoes and wooden clubs.
The people of the island were famously rude and spoke in a strange patois,
but on Sundays they dressed up-- the men in suits and ties fedora hats
the women in summer dresses and picture hats--
and went to the baseball game, played
on the one clear meadow of mown grass.

But what happened to Shirley Finkelstein? they asked.
She wasn't my destiny. I went to war, and
when I came back Brooklyn had drifted off into the mist
and the Artful Dodgers vanished into the West.

........................................................................................Israel Lewis