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.

PARIS, 1911

 

We never made it to Paris, though the framed Steiglitz print of a rain-swept boulevard in that city -- everything gone gray, everything blowing to one side -- which hung for so long in our old apartment, is here with me now. The same thin tree, half-bare and bent beneath the weight of the sky, still reaches upward in defiance; the same street sweeper, shrouded from shoulders to ankles, stoops as though retrieving something dropped to the reflecting water below. The same shadowy figures and buggies in the distance continue to move slowly past. I can almost smell the rain through this curtain of years, can almost hear the whoosh and drumming of it, as if it were approaching us here today. For the moment, this scene rests in the narrow hallway which leads to the bedroom, awaiting the right wall, the right light. You, of course, are not here to ask; and on any wall, in any room, it seems only to get further and further away.

TURBULENCE

 

Flying into New York for the first time,

all those years ago, the plane gliding through

wisps of white cloud, waving and vanishing,

before the gray and the darkness

rose to meet us, rough knots of wind

jolting us one way, then another, as if God,

having failed to reach us through other means,

was again trying to get our attention.

Lightning broke like a crack in the glass,

the plastic curtain of the window falling shut,

while my anxious mind immediately began

to map out the details of our demise,

engines coughing and sputtering into silence,

the passengers behind us praying without reserve,

the strangely serene drop from 40,000 feet

to some abandoned field, your thin summer skirt

with its pattern of daisies blending into

the long, wet grass, the shapes of our bodies,

appearing to be running -- whether toward

each other or away -- imprinted into the earth.

But just as quickly, the darkness gave way

to sunlight, the clouds began to erase and rewrite

themselves, shapes of commas and ellipses

trailing off, above and below, the brief story of

our life together -- part comedy of errors,

part tragedy -- still being written, still in search

of an ending that would make sense.

LAYOVER

 

When I find myself walking through the airport,

the enormous glass walls filled with sky

and my own meager reflection, ostensibly

just another middle-aged traveler wandering lost,

I am, unbeknownst to others, suddenly

thirteen years old again, traversing that strange city

of flight alone, disregarding the instructions given

to me by the kindly airport attendant, a young woman

in a wine-colored smock and neatly-tied scarf

smelling vaguely of vanilla and lavender.

I had never flown, and found myself suddenly

on a solo endeavor, anxiously en route

to stay with my brother or sister out west --

no one had quite determined where

I would end up -- the quietly stubborn kid

enamored with music and poetry, the mysterious world

of girls from which they all seemed to emanate.

My mother, who no longer wanted the job,

would be staying where she was, taking yet another

sabbatical from her parenting career.

So, I found myself on layover, hovering between

cities, and between lives, daydreaming past

the gift shops and baggage carousels,

the lounges overflowing with beery conversation

as the Cubs struggled to pull out a win.

I suppose my mother meant to impart a lesson,

but I already knew how to leave

and not look back, knew how to get lost

in the secret rooms of self, or deep within a crowd.

Overhead, I could hear the formless voice

calling out gate numbers and departure times,

the soft-spoken warnings, as if this were all merely

a game of chance, some tickets better than

others. Who could say which was which?

I walked on, only half listening, for something

that sounded vaguely familiar, the right combination

coupled with a bit of urgency, something that

would lead me, for now, homeward.

THIS MUST BE THE PLACE

 

It was late in December, and you were

visiting from the coast, the thick snow falling

all around us as if in slow motion,

the tires of the car, so low to the ground,

rounding the corners in silence.

You were pointing out the streets and storefronts

you remembered, spoke of friends long since

moved away, turning down a side street

to point out the brownstone where you once lived,

its windows unusually small, its soft yellow light

seemingly from another time and place.

You put in that old cassette, fingers half frozen,

someone singing, as so many others have,

about home -- a little flat, a little off key, but familiar

enough that we remembered every word,

the way a kiss, or the touch of a hand can return

years later, as if they never had left.

How could I tell you in the stillness of that

moment -- you gazing dreamily into your past,

that this -- this very moment -- felt like home to me,

somewhere I longed to stay, if only for a while,

the breath of our words finding each other

without hurry, our jackets smelling of wet sky,

the frozen earth rising, imperceptibly,

to hold us there, before moving on again.

BEFORE THE TOWERS FELL

 

New York that summer was a city half-hidden

behind miles of scaffolding, everything seemingly

being sandblasted, repainted, and refitted,

every rooftop and arch, every window

reaching upward toward a sky of shifting blue,

strangely calm above the grime and clatter of it all.

Walls of glass reflected the bodies of workers,

like the saints framed in the windows of

the crumbling cathedral across from our hotel.

Mostly I remember walking, from one borough

to the next, the city blocks so brief compared to those

seemingly endless boulevards of the Midwest,

the sights, sounds, and smells of a dozen countries

around every corner. I remember stopping for

lunch at the Empire Diner, drinks at the KGB,

remember the famous dancer that you recognized

from a movie sliding gracefully into an SUV,

as though part of a larger routine which no one

on the street had been made aware of.

We walked with aching hips and bandaged heels,

as though tourism was, in fact, as serious

a sport as any, as if youth demanded motion.

Tonight, on yet another bleak anniversary,

I listen, with the others, to the silence, gazing up

at those blue columns of light, as though

they were somehow holding up the sky itself;

I think of the two we once were... before.

Such a small and simple word that must bear,

against all odds, the weight of the unimaginable.

Were we walking into the past all along,

the evening sun beside us reflected a thousand

different ways, yet impossible to pin down?

When did distance itself become destination,

our paths reaching, like those long pillars

of light, separately, into what we could not say?

Where, dear friend, did we go?