Untitled
June 28, 2011
Published: November 19, 2009
I see you among the statues
and the train stations in Rutherford.
I see your briefcase, your physician’s hand.
I see the streets you worked on. The hills
that rise and fall over New York City,
where my mother grew up, and my father,
my uncle, past the swamps and the steel grids,
past your grave that grows purple
forget me nots when I sit in the summer
in the dirt talking to ghosts.
My parents used to walk those hills
in their Sunday shoes,
dreaming of your cherry trees,
Mr. Williams.
I dream about your glasses, tooth, and hand.
A dream about the poem,
pocket of the universe.
I dream about those streets, the search
of all the seasons for your beaming breast
and lab coat. The convoluted
curving highway there, the coat rack
in your practice, or the fleshy tone
of cheekbones, a calendar full of house calls
beside the sofa or a house plant.
I remember about the pheasant coops,
about the railroad tracks, and cats. Think of hills
and fever beds, of chicken soup and birds,
the promise of buds in springtime
in Paterson and Newark.
Think of the house on the corner
on Kingsland Avenue, the people
that covered their lawn in Christmas lights
and waterfalls and reindeer
‘til they died a few years ago.
I dream of them, you know?
I’d fall asleep in the backseat of the car
among the coats and presents,
outside as their trains lit up.
It was Thanksgiving then, and Christmas,
or a balmy summer’s vision
atop that impossible hill.
There was the magnetic dark at night.
The warmth of the mind working
a magic thundershower of clouds
over Jersey’s metal fields.
The electrifying clamor
of such spontaneous grace.