LOST AND FOUND

 

It's not as easy to disappear as it once was,

back in those long ago days before endless threads

of information and the 24-hour news cycle,

before constant surveillance became acceptable,

and anyone, past or present, could be found

with a few clicks on a phone or laptop.

People went missing, and very often stayed that way,

sometimes by choice and elaborate plans,

sometimes turning up with amnesia

in a city on the other side of the world.

Those stories became books and movies, discussed

with amazement at work and the dinner table.

Deaths were staged, and former lives disowned;

a father went out for a pack of cigarettes

and was never heard from by his family again.

My own father ran a successful business

mere blocks from our home, though I never once

saw his face or heard his voice until years later.

You, too, old friend, somehow disappeared

in plain sight, your retreat at first subtle,

then complete, as if planned years in advance.

There was nothing anyone could do.

You became a story with neither an ending

nor linear narrative; though I am speaking of you

now -- that's nothing new -- speaking of you

in the only way I know, reminding myself

that once you were here, right where I am now,

and that once, not so long ago, you could

have said all of this better yourself, could have come

back, if only to tell us what really happened.

BLONDE WOMAN ON A LABRETTA, 1965

 

(from a photograph by Joel Meyerwitz)

It's the way she pauses on that sporty blue scooter, poised and seemingly without care, the movement of the street suspended around her, stoplights counting out their seconds, a few men talking, too distant to be heard. It's enough time, at least, to gaze at her freshly-manicured nails, to feel the subtle breeze ruffling her lavender dress, her loosely pinned-up hair, touching one side of her face like a blessing. Years later, John Lennon would be murdered on the sidewalk to her right, a thin and permanent shadow cast across this intersection. But for now, it's enough to ponder where she might be headed on this sunlit afternoon -- a drab office job or soiree uptown -- as the signal sends her forward to the next block, and the next, this afterimage a reminder of a day long past, here and gone at once, its edges softening into a blur.

GRIEF

The usual messengers arrived to do their worst, kicked your name back and forth as if they knew you, speaking words that were better spoken by you years before. The first told me that you might be home if I stopped by, reading or sleeping; it was only my timing that was off. The next one put on a faceless mask, said I should have been there, should have called, if only to talk of the weather or old times. One cursed you and raged, as I did, against your selfishness, your carelessness with all of those pills. Another fed me only sorrow, bitter and familiar, like the whiskey of my youth. Yet another pressed the old apartment keys into my palm, hard; gave me a stack of books you didn't have time to read. They came and they went, never when they were expected, talked and argued over each other for weeks, then months. None of them listened. None of them told me the name of the one they had kept hidden, that last visitor called Gratitude, which had been there all along, waiting only for me to turn, to raise my hand and testify. To stand.

LEARNING TO SWEAR

I didn't speak much as a child, though 

I learned early, as we all did, which words 

to avoid saying, even if muttered under our breath,

stepping carefully around them,

like broken glass littering the sidewalk,

referring to them, if compelled to,

only by their first letter or two. They were words,

mostly of bodily  function, that came with

punishment, words that got your mouth 

washed out with soap.

Later, I tried them out on my tongue,

alone in my room, foreign words,

oddly shaped and sharp, the sound of them

vaguely startling, even when unattached

to any particular meaning or context.

Last week, my daughter pleaded 

to learn a swear word in Finnish, which

I foolishly gave in to, a small stone

that will eventually be thrown 

back at me.

But since she was born, I have been trying

to unlearn the lazy and the vulgar,

leaving the slings and arrows 

to Shakespeare,

and those more clever with speech than me.

I want more praise, more praise,

less cursing of the gods we continually implore.

I want her to know -- and to know 

myself -- that I revere

this most ordinary of lives,

with its drudgery and inconsistencies, its shifting language 

which can never describe it all,

its welcoming silence at beginning and end.

ROAD

 

There's no marker along that stretch of Highway 8, no stone or plaque bearing your name, the dates you were here, then gone; no makeshift memorial of Mylar balloons and requisite roses wrapped in cellophane. There is only road, indecipherable from any other, its meandering cracks patched with fresh tar, lines offering no discernable word or message. The heel of your boot has been swept away, your handprints -- like wings stopped in mid flight -- have been washed from the dusty hood, the dark blood you spilled allowed to seep slowly into the asphalt, following its own course, like the thinnest of roots, hidden from view. You, of course, have long since passed from this world of ordinary fact -- of arguments and disappointment, of endless coming and going. So, maybe this absence is just as well, along this anonymous road slicing through pine and scrub grass, through small towns without stop lights. No one wants to stop here, or even slow down. They all have somewhere else to be, someone waiting, patiently or otherwise, someone wondering where they are.