Phone Call From Brickie

Tuesday was bad. Cherl turned up in California and called my son, so he knows she left. I hadn't told him yet didn't plan to. “You’re dad was a good guy but not for me. And not to me. He should stay away from people.” She said something like that, if not exactly that. My son Brennan who’s called Brickie by the family and I guess by everyone else, wants me to come to New Jersey for a visit, and maybe even long-term. He works for the New Jersey Transit, formerly a conductor but now wears a suit for the front office. Brickie said that yesterday outside of New Brunswick a guy threw himself in front of the 2:05 out of Trenton. El Smacko is how he put it, train lingo for a death on the tracks. I think telling me this was meant to make me feel good. Or at least better than I was feeling before the phone call. It was a bad day for me but a worse day for that guy. Or a better day? Presumably the day ended the way that guy wanted it to.

I wrote a poem about it but wondered, did I have the right to make a poem about that guy? (Of course I did.) Brickie tells me that the man had family, including little children. Doesn’t matter. If you get to that point, you’re on a one-on-one deal with what Jenny Highfeather calls the Double Vibes. Meaning, it’s you against the Vibes, (or God, if that’s your flavor) and also You against You, and you’re the only one who knows how it’ll come out. (I say all this better, with mucho grace and skill, in the poem.)

I didn’t name the poem after the 2:05, that would have been a rookie maneuver. The poem is called “Trenton Makes, the World Takes,” after the slogan of that city. When my kid told me about that guy and the 2:05, I said: Brickie, you’re not exactly making a very strong case for coming back to Jersey.