Today I cried

at the end of a movie,

first time I’ve cried

since the war,

and it came to me how

mommy cried during movies,

laughed too through her tears

when we boys laughed,

pointed, shouted, “Hey look!

Mommy’s crying again!”

but we couldn’t know, could we,

why she was really crying?

 

Maybe she was crying

because the movie

was about us, our lives,

as I cry today for my daughter

who’s lives in Venice now,

not of Italy or L.A.,

but along some boardwalk

of another life

on the polka dot bike

she found at an antique stall,

thrift store dress ruffled by wind,

joking with jugglers, beach bums,

wasted belles of stage and screen,

her four-foot hair waving behind

like an orange wind sock,

head thrown back,

laughing crazy in the craziness.

 

And I’d pay anything, everything,

to sit again through that matinee,

laughing through my crying,

to watch her in a starring role.

 

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