STEMS AND VINES

 

I didn't know the names of most,

other than the obvious, but I would take my time in that small corner shop

at Victoria and Grand, as if I had a plan,

pulling together a wild array

of color and design, jagged stars

and spears of shifting green,

delicate faces receding into their

velvety folds, varieties you might not

expect to find side by side,

but that made sense to my willfully

uneducated eye, bringing them

home to surprise you with.

Though you tended to eschew tradition

of all kinds, you allowed me this

bit of old-fashioned courting,

a word I have since grown to love,

the shy earnestness and ritual behind it,

its long, noble history, the eternal doorstep

we eventually come to, hoping for entry.

Those days are long gone,

as are you, and there's nowhere

to bring you flowers now,

no patch of earth or marbled stone,

not even a vase upon this dusty bookshelf.

The shadows here move without shape;

the wind crowded with your absence.

I wish I could remember

the names of those flowers now,

each spectacular species from another world.

They would be my words, as my words

in turn would bloom for you,

dark and glistening with the earth,

declaring, in no small measure,

everything you must already know.

ONE SUMMER EVENING

 

I had forgotten

that it was raining

outside;

I had forgotten

even that there was

an outside,

sitting there with

you, waiting for

it to pass.

GOVERNMENT CHEESE

We knew we were poor, clad in our secondhand outfits, forever shaped to someone else's frame, the bangs of our unruly hair trimmed to a high and crooked fringe by the uncertain hand of our mother. But we knew, occasionally, the joy of opening that oblong box of cardboard, the newness of its smell, silver foil gleaming within, brighter than a handful of freshly washed coins. We would tear into it with haste, cut a jagged slice with a butter knife, then another, never making a straight line. We never asked where it came from or why, though we gave thanks, as always, before wolfing down our grilled cheese and tomato soup, the finest I've had to this day. It was a delicacy lost to many, but not on us peasant kids, smiling our greasy smiles, wiping our mouths with the backs of our hands before racing out into the world again.

 

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.