Tony Magistrale: Family Man

Walking across Delaware Avenue to the Statler Hotel
for a meeting or to sign important papers
(how important are any of them now?)
pulling his coat together with one hand,
holding on to his fedora with the other,
headlong into Lake Erie white wind
as specks of ice fling themselves between office buildings,
another interminable winter of slush
and burnt snow, Buffalo skies the ashen gray of death.

Each Christmas Eve I would meet him
downtown. We would drink expensive red wine
until December darkness drove us out into it
and talk turned sentimental.
Toughest trial lawyer I ever saw work a courtroom
had to wipe away tears
whenever he heard the song White Christmas.

For forty years a compliant prisoner
in his own home. Work his addiction and escape,
his only refuge against the daily humiliations,
the tedious boredom, the inane dinner chatter.
He used to tell me someone is going
to have to die first before anything can change.
And I wondered where was that trial lawyer
in the face of such protracted misery?

Back then, a man just didn’t disappear,
up and leave his family on their own.
He tried to explain this to me every time
I would ask, but that was before I understood
anything about being a family man.

~~~~

Copyright 2026 Anthony Magistrale. This poem first appeared in Cultural Daily.

Anthony Magistrale is known primarily as a biographer of Stephen King and Edgar Allan Poe. Magistrale has worked as an English professor at the University of Vermont since 1983, receiving the Literary Laundry’s Award of Distinction in 2011 for his poetry