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.

SPARRING

 

My young hands are slow, hopelessly so, hardly

equipped for the instinctual jab and reach

required for this dance; my flat feet, likewise, reluctant

to lift themselves from the cool kitchen linoleum.

This is as close as we will get to an embrace,

my brother and I, the palms of his hands held out

toward me, waving, circling, shifting the air between us,

hands which look like larger versions of my own.

Still in high school, he proudly wears his silver satin

jacket from the White Bear Lake Boxing Club,

the rust-colored spatters of blood, who knows whose,

along its front and arms a badge of honor.

"Protect your head," he reminds me, repeating it,

having twice had his own nose broken of late.

This is the true gospel he is preaching,

fire and brimstone in each of his teenage fists,

where all of his sorrow, anger, and betrayal entwine,

speaking with blunt certainty all that he cannot;

and though I flinch, I know that he would not hit me

in the face, not intentionally, but merely brushes

against my cheek slightly, delicately, my periphery

catching only the blur of sudden motion, of autumn light

shifting through the broken branches of trees,

the movement of human or animal already gone,

just to show that he can, just to remind me

how quickly things can come at you in this life,

and how quickly they can all just disappear.

TWO DREAMS

 

The first night you came to me in sleep, we were

back at the old apartment, everything exactly

as it had been nearly two decades before,

mildew seeping through its basement walls,

silverware rattling atop the refrigerator,

cats circling our feet, slipping in and out of view.

You walked into the room, already knowing

what I was thinking, explaining that you had only

brought some things to the consignment shop,

and not to worry now that you were home.

"There's something I want to show you," you said,

making your way to the kitchen, white shopping bag

at your side making a sharp, crackling sound.

The second night, your face appeared perplexed,

your smile sheepish and uncertain, as if you

had just begun to realize the absence of your body,

the dusty amber sunlight softening the edges

of your elbows and shoulder blades.

You were frail, as you were the last time I saw you,

seemingly growing smaller before my eyes.

You said you didn't know what had happened,

that you only remembered falling asleep

in the same familiar bed we once had shared,

only to wake in this shadowland, land of in-betweens

which you never claimed to believe in.

This time when you turned, I meant to speak,

but instead awoke against my will.

Now, the days are rainy, the weeks stretching

into months, and the months into a greater silence.

You have not returned, though I am still here

in the next room, among the dust and the bookshelves,

waiting to see whatever it is you have found.

STRANGERS

 

Maybe we never know each other in the end,

never see past the bright reflecting surface of things,

the innumerable masks we slip into as easily as

our own flesh when waking into morning.

More than once you told me that I was

inscrutable, even after all those years of breathing

the same air, sharing the same silence

and secrets, dreaming between the same four walls.

But I misread you too, love, thought you were

stronger than you were, never knowing

how precarious your balance was on that ledge

between the most ordinary of days

and your own private oblivion. Forgive me

for thinking your stubbornness was only a virtue,

that the well you drew from would be enough

to keep you alive, no matter what lies your

tireless and wayward mind may have fed you.

I imagined you old, the grand dame of the avenue,

wheeling your rickety shopping cart back home

from the co-op, raising your skinny arms

in indignation at the cars and buses who refused

to stop and acknowledge your status.

Maybe we are merely strangers at the end

of it all, no better or worse than when we began;

though I wish you were here to tell me

how wrong I am, how foolish, that we knew each other

as well as two people could, and that if we met

again, every year between and behind us forgotten,

we would want to know each other

as we had before, shy with our first glances,

circling, searching for just the right word,

the right moment, the right door to open, to enter

this life all over again.