IN EARLY FALL 1978, BILLY JOEL BECOMES MY LORD AND SAVIOR
Ruin is rising from the sewers: my wife's parents,
110 miles from New York, walking a colicky baby
across the creaking floor at 3 AM, renouncing
all hope, I who'd enter there.
For Eastern Long Island is a wilderness:
it is James Wright's Ohio
with the added stink of dead fish,
a cemetery of saloons and stock cars.
Comes the miracle in the middle of the journey
of my life: the Newark Star-Ledger and a job
I am able to get at the landing above desperation:
for the Circulation Manager is about to fire
his stoner Assistant, and he hires me
to be It in the last guy's place.
Seven days a week: meet the truck, go home Sundays at 5 AM.
The rest of the time driving an unfilled route
over the back roads between Butler and Boonton.
It is that darkness that draws me back over and over
to this moment over 30 years gone, felt now forever.
The car radio, AM only, plays Billy Joel at 4 AM.
Out of the car, standing, taking a leak darkness,
I thank God I am not a woman, and even so,
there is Billy telling me he loves me just the way I am,
or for someone to get out of his life and
leave him alone.
Black sky of stars, the million points of light.
A lie.
Not darkest before the dawn
except perhaps on the Mayan calendar.
Instead the beginning of darkness, relieved
only for this first time by the vanity of hope
the prayer that this will be the worst
and that the Piano Man will lead me through
the worst of times by the light glowing from within,
the black keys shining like a beam.
KW
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