Listening Long and Late

we ride a long time

47 we ride a long time We ride a long time on the subway to a neighborhood of foreign streets. My father takes me by the hand and we walk up the front steps of a house. He rings the bell and Joe DiMaggio opens the door, as my father said he would. Joe’s tall and he smiles politely at me as he signs the baseball my father hands him. How my father met him I don’t know. Maybe it was one of those times he’d disappear for a while. I used to stand at the window, waiting to see him turn the corner of our street, but he would be away somewhere else, maybe with Joe DiMaggio, in a city other than this one. ...