A Blizzard of Joan in Carolina Heat

In North Carolina

It's already 90 degrees.

 it's not even noon.

I need to cool off. 

Throw on some Miles Davis.

Birth of the cool.

Think back twenty years.

A blizzard in Rochester.

A call from my Mom.

Sad news

Joan had passed away.

Joan was my high school girl friend.

Lived on the same street

five houses cdown

five houses further from main street.

Joan came from Quincy, Mass.

 My daughter Mary  lives in Quincy today.

Upon Joans arrival

All the guys were after her.

Dark haired

Dark eyed Down to Earth

Cool shoes

Dance like the wind.

We all smoked

So did Joan.

Behind my house was the field

My buddies and me Still unknown

would gather at the field every day

For baseball and smokes

Away from parental interference.

Frog

Rick

Holly Hood

Stash Malloy

King

Chief Chewacki

Big Joe

Johnny Crown

Hazey

Spook

Al

Dogs

X the Known

Ugg Too Much

Stingray.

Very few girls

One day Joan 

Sitting in the bleachers

Smoking Winstons and then gone.

Everybody noticed

Everbody flipped and wished.

Mac made the first move

He was born in Boston.

Handsome and he knew it

Tough and he knew it

Soon they were a couple

With accents in common.

Mac lived much closer to Main Street.

After stopping at Joan's

Mac would head back towards the Main

And pause at my house and to tell me

Of romantic complications.

While we smoked in the Rambler

Mac was interested in marriage

More interested in the torrid stops

While the Lettermen harmonized

In the background, along the way.

Joan had other ideas further from the Main

Unaccented and nearer to the heart.

Joan was almost sixteen, ya know what I mean.

I was the only guy from the field that she invited

To the sweet sixteen party in her basement.

I was without my crew including Mac.

The word got back to that Joan

Wanted me

To ask her

To dance.

Wonderland by Night.

Wonderland was a dare

To bring a girl close

I took the dare.

I brought Joan in as we used to say

Or did she bring me?

She put her hand on the back of my neck.

Her scent of Ambush filled the air

With another dose of Wonderland.

She whispered in my ear.

Whispered

Whispered

Whispered

"I'm done with Mac"

We spent the next two years together.

I got my first car.

I  would pick her up from school

We would stop at our spot near the cascades

At Ellison Park where we would count kisses.

I took her to my Senior Ball

She took me to her Junior Prom

She took me to her Senior ball.

She saved the cover of her yearbook

For my romantic writing

I filled it and she showed it to her friends.

Eventually I went away to college

We made it through the first year of distance.

Joan stayed home no need for college.

I met Bobbi and drifted away.

Word got back to Joan, I'm told.

No drama, no trauma barely a whimper

More of a ghost for us both.

I heard that Joan got married

I knew her husband

He never hung out at the field

Unless you count Viet Nam

I heard they had kids

Joan will always be the girl

Who showed up at the field,

The innocent seductive

The Ambush girl who whispered

Wonderland in my ear

Before my first beer.

Always nineteen

Until the blizzard 20 years ago

When I learned 

On the phone

From my Mom

That Joan had passed.

Lung cancer.

51 years of life.

I wondered and wonder

About her death bed.

Did she remember the Junior Prom

The way she looked that night

Ellison Park

That day on the bench

In the field

Her Sweet Sixteen whisper?

Suddenly in the midst of that blizzard

I felt colder and older

As I do now

With Miles betwen us

In the Carolina heat.