Everyone said: I was your favorite We looked exactly alike Winters, I was your Oochie, Mariooch Summers, your Huckleberry girl Elected to get money from you for ice cream I’d bat my eyelashes to open your change purse You’d take out a dime, the whole time smiling Hazelton winters, you’d play golf with Gigi, Murphy, Mike tracking your golf ball oranges over snow-crusted greens Long Beach Beach Haven summers you’d walk and walk to the lighthouse and back simple man, few needs while we’d scatter and pick through the huckleberry patch Mother held the bucket We filled the cups Home from the wars in Germany, Algiers you married the girl you’d met blind made a home for her, her mother, four daughters, son You worked in New Jersey through the week setting lead, driving linotype Weekends you’d come back to us and Jackie Gleason, Mario Lanza, Bonanza Saturday nights I’d be rubbing your head helping your hair grow back Then you worked the presses night shifts in Wilkes-Barre driving down ungodly 309 down Ashley Mountain past slag heaps always on fire, the caved-in road’s pavement collapsing Born December 24, Natale family was everything Theresa at 14 raising the rest of you — you and Fran, Evelyn Rex, Ponzi, Karl Vinnie, Johnnie, Mish You walked and walked until you couldn’t walk to the double house daily to see Fran and Theresa Daddy, I hope you’re walking now from green to luscious green get in another 36 arc your orange balls into the pale blue air make a hole in one an eagle.
— by Lisa Sarasohn (based on conversation with Mary Rose)