PENNIES

 

I'm going to miss them when they go,
as they inevitably will, those impractical
remnants of the past, smallest
of small change that we, as kids, placed on the sun-warmed railroad tracks, waiting for the weight of a Burlington Northern
to wipe their words and images clean.
I'll miss the glass jugs and Ball jars
filled with them, soapy light slanting through the kitchen window
sparking each of them in a different way.
I'll miss their jangle and their coppery smell, and how they could make a kid feel rich waiting to cash them in at the bank,
to be counted and rolled like cigars.
Most of all, I will miss their random promise of luck,
how a moment, a mood, a day
could turn on such a small object,
dropped or tossed along the sidewalk,
waiting to be reclaimed, waiting to reveal, to you alone, its secret worth.

MY MOTHER'S CHINA

 

My mother's china -- bone-white, heavy in young hands,
encircled with a pattern of sky-blue flowers
and filigree, tiny leaves pointing in all directions
at once -- emerged from the far reaches of the cupboards
only twice a year -- Thanksgiving, and Christmas.
It was a set acquired, piece by piece, each having its day,
by saving up a small fortune in S&H green stamps
from the local Red Owl -- the delicate teacups
and saucers, the weighted serving tray, dinner plates
and bread plates, a cream pitcher for coffee.
Even butter claimed its own home -- such extravagance!
Yet we could not have know -- how could we? --
what such an ordinary luxury might mean to our mother,
to at last have something simple and fine, something stately
among the brick and cinder block of the projects,
the mountain girl from Tennessee, denied even a doll
or summertime shoes, trying hard to forget one
lifetime while imaging another, brighter somehow,
which might or might not choose to emerge.
But twice a year, at least, we drank our milk from goblets
like royalty, poured our canned, grayish vegetables
and gelatinous cranberry sauce onto what we imagined
must have been the prettiest plates in town,
while that gravy boat, loaded with thick, brown cargo,
sat motionless among the white cloth of its waters,
dreaming already of the long voyage home,
its sturdy bow not to be seen again for months.

MYSTERY LIGHT

 

Sometimes, when I'm in an old building --
marble floors and dark wood smelling of history --
I can't help but press one of the light switches
on the wall, those ancient metal buttons
blackened by the touch of countless fingers,
curious to see if they are still functional.
I did the same as a kid, in church basements
and schools, houses with unfinished attics,
half-expecting someone to storm through the door,
demanding to know who flipped the switch,
the one that controlled the whole neighborhood.
We certainly lived in enough places with wiring
from the turn of the century, lights flickering,
unsure if they wanted to work or not;
some you'd have to flip three times, rapidly,
to wake, or press with just the right force.
Not surprisingly, more than one of those houses
burned to the ground after we had left.
These days -- so many years turned to shadow
in my periphery -- I can't help but wonder,
against my own reason, if I'm turning on the light
in some distant room of the past, my brother
blowing ribbons of cigarette smoke, balanced on
the narrow window ledge, my older sister
curling her hair for a date, telling another corny joke.
There are rooms I would not want to enter --
some known, some forever closed -- but I'd take
my chances to see those faces lit up again.

SUBTITLES

 

I don't know when it happened, but I have grown

too old or too lazy to read the subtitles of foreign movies,

snippets of dialogue scrolling across the bottom of

the television screen like a stock market ticker,

another language I can never hope to understand.

We used to watch them nearly every weekend,

caught the classics and the obscure at film festivals,

along with the old Hollywood variety, all those beautiful

made-up faces speaking as though they came from

nowhere in particular, a place we longed to be.

You always said that people should come with subtitles,

and -- most of us, at least -- with warning labels.

I sometimes wish for a translation of all the things

you did not say, every ellipses when you looked away,

though you are now beyond the world of words.

I do miss sharing a language, speaking in shorthand.

Last week, I let an old black-and-white movie run,

the sound turned down to a muffled whisper,

while I dozed off. I could comprehend the passion

well enough, occasional bursts of anger, the wariness

that men and women always bring to each other.

I could understand it this way, the sudden slamming

of a door, sad eyes gazing from a cloudy cafe window,

the rushing toward a train, its smoke a signature.

I could imagine then how it all worked out.

PHONE BOOTH

 

Once, you could find one almost anywhere,

a small and unassuming refuge, and sometimes

the only shelter from a sudden downpour,

the floor of an uncertain summer sky collapsing,

casting hard fistfuls of rain and hail against

the narrow panes of glass, tumbling down from

its small square roof, dimly-lit from within.

Sometimes it seemed the only refuge

from the constant clang and drone of the city,

the exact intersection of public and private,

a hand-me-down space that granted legitimate reason

for squeezing in close beside your first girlfriend,

stranded, shivering, calling home for a ride.

I can still feel the weight of those phone books,

suspended by cables, knocking at our knees,

the thick heavy receiver, the unexpected blessing

of a coin someone had left, mistakenly or not.

I remember most my sister, exiled by our mother

to the booth outside the grocery store,

evenings whiled away under its moth-yellow glow,

chatting and laughing with her latest beau,

making call after call with the same lucky quarter.

There were always messages -- a religious tract

to make a child ponder the afterlife, always an expletive

or phone number, or the secret code of initials,

a bright red heart rounded with a Sharpie.

But you knew that someone loved someone else,

enough so to write it down for all to see,

or scratched it into metal, sticky and smudged,

those rough, uneven letters, as close to permanent

as anything -- their messages still there,

long after their houses have all been removed,

declaring themselves, always in the present tense,

far above our cool and collective silence.

AIRPORT SUNRISE

When I was a kid, and you could do so, I loved

to wander through the vast, complex city of the airport,

past its chintzy gift shops and stuffy bars,

wafts of blue-tinged smoke and stale beer drifting

out into the clamor of air-conditioned lobbies,

where everything was in motion, the lives

of strangers and their families suddenly so close,

everyone embracing, everyone either waving

goodbye or hello for the first time in years.

Someone was always crying, sometimes a whole

congregation, shuddering as if from the cold.

Someone, you suspected, might never be seen again.

I would have been there with one of my sisters,

visiting from, or returning to, their separate family

in California, a mysterious land of earthquakes,

sun, and ocean, where the only snow they ever saw

came from postcards or their TV screens.

I loved the enormous glass walls at the terminals,

how they scaled upward seemingly without end, drifting

into shadow, the mighty and monstrous planes

gleaming on the tarmac, tiny men waving

each of them this way and that, flares in hand,

signaling in a language no one else could fathom.

I loved to see the sun hovering on the horizon,

throwing out a few tentative ropes of light,

then pulling itself up in earnest, blanketing this

flat and slightly tilted corner of the world; and I, too,

would be waving a solemn goodbye as my sister,

along with the other passengers, slump-shouldered,

moved forward down that accordion-like tunnel,

something small closing behind each of them,

like the shadow of a page being turned, sparks of blue

and yellow from a doorway I could not see.

FAST

 

You were always so fast, brother, even when we

were just kids back in the housing projects;

couldn't sit still, your limbs constantly fidgeting,

growing long and quick seemingly overnight,

your lankiness slowly turning into grace.

You were always in pursuit of something else,

something new, risky, while I, the annoying kid brother,

could never keep up, tagging along though I did,

daydreaming, awkward within my own skin.

You drank your first beer, kissed your first girl,

unclasped your first bra as though there was no time

to lose, as though they were the only things

that mattered in a life you could already see drawing

to a close, as though you were on a timeline

the rest of us could neither see nor understand.

When you said, as casually as though commenting

on the weather, that you'd never make it to forty,

I put it down to the whiskey, the dark romance of youth.

Only now, gone so many years, do you linger,

speaking openly as you rarely did before, no need

to rush, or to leave out any detail in the telling.

There is no road. We walk now side by side.