On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all
peoples a feast of rich food.
————-——Isaiah 25:6
Light brushing the gray walls of the old hotel
across Fifty-First with those honking Fords
and Hudsons. A walk to the other side, then up
a hundred feet, where there’s that fancy French
menu you can’t read, yet stare at time after time,
the scent of sweet baked ham with cloves
enveloping you like some floating siren
shimmering through the ventilator fan.
Ah! That honey-baked ham. Something
as exotic as all that, something that defined
another world right across the street, a scent
of something far beyond your mother’s reach,
but for now all mine at seven. Ah! Just to stand there
and take in the dizzying Disney wonder of it all.
A world so near, and yet so far. Like that communion
rail at Saint John’s on Fifty-Seventh, welcoming as you drew
near the incense-laden altar, and yet holding you off
as you drew closer to that sacred space. Something so near,
and yet so far away. All so very far away.
Ah, the mystery of it all! A hot dog and boiled potatoes
for supper, with sometimes an avocado your father
brought home from repairing trucks at Calavo’s across
the GW Bridge somewhere in New Jersey.
Something different, yes, but not like the incense
of that baked ham slowly simmering beyond those
gray forbidding walls. Something open-handed
and yet close-fisted, something welcoming, teasing you
as you stood out there in the winter dusk
as that sweet smell wafted on and on all over you.
But then, let’s face it. How many times since then
you’ve spent bucks, big bucks, on dinners for
yourself, your family, and others. Still, all that
comes later. It’s that Tantalus redux scent that lingers on.
Paul Mariani is the Emeritus University Professor of English at Boston College. A poet, biographer, memoirist, critic, and essayist, his poems appeared in the initial issue of Image. His latest books of poetry are Ordinary Time and All That Will Be New, both from Slant.
Photo by Julia Fiander on Unsplash
