Father's Day Special

Today, in honor of my Dad, I reprint a poem he wrote over fifty years ago. It's a melancholy meditation on a changing extended family, as his nephews, nieces and cousins were leaving the nest of the family compound on Liberty Street in Troy's Little Italy, starting their own families and leaving the once bustling backyard to quietly fade.

He didn't know, when he wrote it, that the property would be bought, along with a hundred others, by the government, be torn down for an arterial highway that would never be built. If he had known, I believe the poem would have been a lot less sentimental and a lot angrier.

Grass On The Bocci Coourt

By

Frank A. Visk

There is grass on the bocci court growing,

'Twas a time when you'd none there;

All the players seem to be missing--

I guess it's because they don't care.

A group would always be waiting

For a chance to play a game:

Now the yard is much too quiet--

Things are certainly not the same.

And the place we call the barracks

Well, you know the condition it's in.

Once it was filled with laughter--

Now it doesn't even force a grin.

So you say that “We all have to change,

Families grow and they scatter away” –

But wouldn't it be an occasion

To go back to “The Ranch” some day!

Progress must move ever forward:

“Twelve Liberty” will be just a dream.

Say, let's “gang around” at the “Old Homestead”

And once more be a winning team.