Since there have only been two brief encounters with aliens 
I’ve had no chance to serve them my specialty: 
spaghetti & meatballs.
I did once cook the dish for a reunion,
though since dad & new wife arrived five hours late
& I forgot my brothers didn’t speak to each other
the dinner didn’t amount to much.
I didn’t bother showing them the half-dead catalpa
flowering eighteen springs in a row
that Lou, ex-brother-in-law, early on advised me
to cut down. I never made spaghetti & meatballs for his family.
But I did for old, dear friends just before leaving
the East & once for my son-in-law’s French parents
gazing on Brooklyn for the first time
& then last night for new friends in Santa Fe
in our house surrounded by fruiting apricot trees.
Always from a “sixty-minute” recipe,
always with garlic bread, salad, & red wine.

Both times the aliens shifted the trailhead.
First, in the hills of Western Massachusetts
where a sugar maple, prophesied to topple
only if a hurricane hit, towered
in view of the front window.
& after the hurricane hit I prepared spaghetti & meatballs
for my second wife’s son.
The next incident involved hiding the gate
leading out of the Pecos Wilderness after a four-hour hike.
Aliens are quite crafty in never leaving clues or breadcrumbs
which along with oregano, hot pepper, rosemary & marjoram
are a key ingredient of the meatballs.

My mom used to say she wanted normal boys
then she kept the three of us in a room with two windows.