Each weekend was like traveling the world from end to end,
exploring all the lands
I'd read about in books
and seen by flickering light
on television screens.

My mother worked on Spring Street.
Little Italy,
with Louis Prima
blaring on the radio
and wiseguys sipping Sambuca,
with coffee beans aflame.

I'd visit Liam in Hell's Kitchen,
shamrock green and soaked in Guinness,
full of Westies
sharpening their knives.

Then on to Chinatown for lunch,
pagoda phone-booths,
and plucked ducks hanging in the windows,
while Triad men and Dragon-boys
played Mah Jong in the smoky parlors.

Uptown past the Jewish jewelers,
Hassidic men
with bags of diamonds
ready to be sold.
Past vendors on street corners
from every country of the world.

I'd meet my grandmother in Yorkville,
in the shadow of the UN,
to eat some pastry,
good as anything Vienna offers,
and schnitzel,
good as anything she cooked.

Finally comes music,
up in Harlem
and a late night coffee
in Harlem's Spanish twin,
before we race the sun to bed
across the bridge.

Around the world in seven hours,
Phileas Fogg's got nothing on me.