John A. Romagna

Gumption

In a room that looked large,
With wide armchairs, amber-colored light
From standing lamps, hardcover books
On deep shelves,

She asked me not to call her ‘Aunt Mary.’
I ran, six flights up for toast and eggs,
Sat on a window ledge, watching trolleys,

Listened.
She named every building on the long walk
To the Lincoln Memorial. We got there
Before the crowds.

Leaving home in Iowa to work for FDR,
She never went back. ‘Gumption,’
She called it. Strange word
For courage.

My mom kept her necklace, and a diary
From her summer out west, after the war:
Long rides, dusty days, waiting in line
To see Old Faithful. A Mr. Walton drove,
Fixed flat tires, knew where to get gas
Or a fine lunch.

She never married. What a catch!
She’d have worn her blue hat with a feather
And a veil she never pulled down, shoes
With thick heels that clumped, clumped
On her hardwood floors.

No one else could call me ‘Johnny.’
Entering my mind the way an artist
Signs a painting with a brushstroke. Mary!
I will have my own logical city, and a pathway
To far off mountains, canyons, red sun
Bleeding out on a wide ocean.

John Romagna lives in Clinton, NJ. His most recently published poem, Variation on a Poem by Yeats, was awarded Honorable Mention in the Passager Journal’s 2022 Anual Poetry Contest issue, September 2022.