THE LAST TIME

 

The last time I saw you, after so long apart,

I was, I confess, startled by how small you seemed,

as if you had somehow perfected a means of

walking away while standing perfectly still, or were

trying to slip out of this world unnoticed.

Your shoulder blades shown through your frayed

gray sweater, your blue eyes drifting further and further

into themselves. Perhaps our former lives always

seem smaller when we wander back in, or perhaps

we are merely the worry dolls of anxious gods,

worn smooth as river stone with time.

You were having trouble eating, you confided,

and trouble sleeping, too -- though

this malady was certainly not new to you,

your mind forever leaping from one thought to

another at the most inconvenient of hours.

Would I have wanted to know in that moment

that this meeting, seemingly insignificant,

was also a kind of parting, that you would soon

disappear into the shadow world of self, no longer

calling or answering the phone, no longer

reading, or bothering to venture outdoors?

Would I have spoken something disguised

as wisdom, or offered you some small comfort,

a prayer which you would almost certainly have refused?

Would I have thought to ask for forgiveness,

or simply to thank you for the years we walked together?

I do not know. But we parted with smiles that day,

not the slightest taste of bitterness lingering

between us. We were kind, as we had been

at the beginning, as we were meant to be, two

old friends softened into unexpected middle age,

adept, at last, with the familiarity of our leaving.

RETURNING

 

For the first time since your leaving in the cold-dark of winter, I turned the car onto our former street, houses and cars grown sleepy in the warm afternoon air. Even the songbirds had grown quiet. I walked slowly down the narrow sidewalk where once we walked so many years ago, the breeze upon my face and neck like the breath from another world, an old friend sending back word. The once-manicured lawns had reverted to an urban wildness, the neighborhood suddenly trying to save the few bees that remained, offering them whatever small sanctuary of earth they could. So the daylilies had grown tall and strong, the long grass waved at its ease, and the ghost-heads of dandelions sang their silent choruses, letting their wishes blow wherever they may. In the dim window of the old place, smaller somehow, the face of a tabby cat -- round as an apple -- looked out, as if you had placed it there. I smiled slightly, knowing you would have approved, nodding to myself, moving back into the day.

ODE TO THE NORTHERN STATES POWER PLANT, circa 1974

 

In the damp stillness of summer, and long into the fall,
we would hear its buzz and crackle,
a continuous drone below the surface of things,
as I watched from the slightly uneven steps
of our foster home across the street on Atwater.

It seemed, to me, to be a city unto itself,
living and breathing, strung together by endless wire
and cables, thick coils, and transformer poles,
lights, near and far, signaling like lazy stars at all hours
in a time signature which continually eluded me.

I could while away the better part of a day perched
in front of the plate glass window, gazing
at the enormous trucks, their tires tall as doorways,
their lifts gleaming above the sunlit trees.

I didn't know where my mother and father had gone,
or why, only that their stories did not converge
with mine; but I liked the grown-ups here,
who laughed easily, and spoke without shouting,

I liked the smoke and the hum of our humble street,
and those men in their white hard hats
who arrived daily, with their clunky black lunchboxes
and their clunky black work boots, men
who held the structure of our daily lives together,

driving back and forth through the heavy iron gates,
past the signs reading Danger: Keep Out,
and past the razor wire reaching innocently from
one angle of blue sky to the next.

TELLING STORIES

 

When I remember now those bars and restaurants

along the avenue -- most of them long gone

and forgotten, along with those hopelessly younger

versions of ourselves -- I remember, too,

how you loved telling stories about everyone

within your line of sight, inventing detailed narratives

that were alternately comical, or tragic, sometimes

outlandish, sometimes quite believable.

You knew -- for your own belief in the story

was always essential -- who was on their first date,

and who was on their last, who was celebrating

their daughter's graduation, and who was in mourning;

you knew the man at the bar was out on parole

by the way he clutched his fork, eyes darting like silverfish,

knew which bartender was skimming money,

and which wrote poetry on the backs of napkins.

Now that you have returned so abruptly to silence

and to myth, I can't help but wonder

what you might have said about us, sitting there,

observing, as though we held some secret wisdom.

Would you have invented a better ending

for us, separately or together, one with a bit of nuance,

some humor, or at least a hint of romance?

Might there be an opportunity for redemption?

Sometimes I imagine our stories go on without us,

while we go about our routines, planning

and plotting, setting one book down to reach

for another, endlessly distracted, the lives

we once thought absolute becoming less and less

believable, in need of reconsideration.