Take it With You

Sometimes its good to pre-pack.
To figure out what we'll take.
To consider what's important,
what will last.

New York will last
longer than the idea of New York.
Longer than Sinatra's New York,
or the 70's New York.

Is it memory that is everlasting, defining?
Good graffiti stays with you
more than the building it's on.
Like the view from a train
a structure slides from thought
returning when

we see it, prompting words,
'hey... good tag.'

Under a pool of noon light
I sit and ponder.

Last Spring
a mother and daughter shared
a cigarette on a train platform,
but in particular
it's the way the wind blew
their hair that I'm thinking of.
How the mother cursed.
How the daughter looked
brushing ash
from her painted lips.

The image is lucid,
wet in my mind.

I put that one in
neatly caressing the corners.

It begins, picking more, recalling.

Toledo's cold, Andy ripping
his drawing, the smell of a hospital
elevator, speeding through Scranton,
dinner in Ottawa, sound of the Pacific,
seagull shadows, a rusty nail,
losing Endora.

Over the next hour
I find balance in the grief
and gladness in my life,
humbling fate, misadventure.
It could be worse.

By the end
sweat announces
my worry.
Down to two,
room for one.

It's the way my wife smiles
seeing new snow.

But it's also her serious nakedness
the night we moved in.
The lines of her jeans pressed
into the soft skin of her hips.
A rugged darkness under her eyes
hugging me, saying

'We're home.'

The pool around me is gone now.
I can not pick.

I can not pick.
Not in the time I have left.
Not in geological time.
Not even when the wind blows
announcing the Second Coming.
Perhaps that is enough. Comforting.

Souls, lining the streets,
would pass me on the side.
Not packed.
Not ready.