yellow ponchos

uncle rich & my youngest brother Joey are
in Disney World this week. it's january 
in New York & there's icicles growing
on the bottom of my car like chin hairs.
i check the weather in Orlando & it's 
a spring-time 60 degrees with a chance of showers.
rich took all us gow kids to Disney, 
first with me when i turned six
& then billy & now joey. a year before
the trip he started telling me stories
about the amusement park as if they 
were folklore. my favorite was the story
about the yellow ponchos. when i asked
him to re-tell it he seemed confused 
considering he'd told me about much more
interesting subjects like haunted mansions 
& space mountains & African safaris. 
he explained that when he was little 
the ponchos they sold at the parks were
yellow & they changed them to be see-through
because it was easy to get lost when
everyone in the whole park was wearing 
these yellow ponchos. i'd ask him if there
was anywhere we could get a yellow poncho
& if he had any pictures of everyone
in yellow ponchos. after i'd pretended
to fall asleep i would lay on the bottom bunk
of my bed, pull the cover over my head
& pretend to be lost in Disney would 
wearing a yellow poncho. i was fascinated
with getting lost in general. i would  
sometimes get lost on purpose in Walmart
& mom would have to have them call for
me over the intercom of the store. 
they'd find me happily coiled up 
in a wrack of jeans or laying on a shelf
next to boxes of cereal.
Disney World especially interested me,
i think i was convinced that if everyone
got lost something magical could happen there. 
Joey plays piano & he's actually getting
pretty good. sometimes i swear
that i hear him practicing scales all the way 
from New York. i get up from bed to check 
the living room for him but it's always 
the same as i left it. i have to remind myself 
that he's getting older. he's 9 now. 
i feel more like an uncle than a brother.
when i do visit every few months he asks
me frantically if we can play & if i can
listen to him on piano, as if this might
be the last time he sees me. maybe i dramatize it,
maybe he doesn't think about me much at all. 
maybe i'm a bad brother.
it's going to snow this weekend in New York.
i think one day i'll take him to Disney World,
my other brother Billy too. we'll all go when we're
too old & we don't have any kids of our own.
i'll find us yellow ponchos & smuggle them
into the luggage. in the morning, while they're
still asleep i'll dress them in the ponchos
& leave the hotel room quietly in my own. 
when they wake up they'll rush outside in the rain
to find themselves lost in a world 
of yellow ponchos. they won't find me.