It departed at 8:32pm on 1st October, 1963
from a maternity hospital
in a small town in North Albania,
stopped at a creche to collect some cries,
toys,
ink spilt on shirts and trousers,
a broken pencil.
Other stops included
dull classes with mountains of books,
copies, fights, loves, hates, mistakes,
first kisses, white dust from the chalk,
lost shoes on football pitches.
Then it stopped again
at different workplaces
where the head was not needed at all, just the arms,
because the bosses were the ones
My grandmother had a true calendar,
a meaningful, eventful one.
“You were born four moons
after the heavy flooding
which killed half of the town,
twelve moons before
the communists dynamited the church.
It was just two moons after
the grapes were ripened,”
she used to say to me.
As a child, until I began school,
I knew nothing of the fact
that I was born on 1st October, 1963.
If I tell you my birthday
with the current calendar,
I tell you nothing about myself.
have all been written down, but still
she has trouble working the TV. She calls
me up to say the device has turned itself off
again, and could I come over and turn it
back on? Just look at the notes Nana,
I say. I wrote the instructions down for you.
It’s a similar story with the microwave,
with its buttons seemingly designed to
perplex her. The internet is a true enigma.
I just don’t know how to manage, now
that he’s gone. The place is just so big,
so empty. And the bills, she says. Michael
used to sort the bills – now I don’t know
what to do. I try to assure her that all is OK,
all is in order, the electricity won’t run out,
the hot water won’t suddenly go cold.
One day in July,
Sierra Nevada
(sun unblocked, high, blazing)
—I was splitting and
stacking tamarack-rounds
for somebody
in town. Heat
came up
through my body to my head.
went blind. I was seventeen,
had learned by then to be
more embarrassed
than frightened
by affliction. I saw
just well enough
to stagger down to the general store,
I am my home,
my real estate.
Memory contests the deed
and title, would
force me to live
in recall, a phantom
condominium of fate.
I am the shack
of me, a self with rooms,
a past out back,
an attic that looms,
a pantry with brooms.
This is why blankets
at 4:13 a.m. feel
(why rain badgering
roof over the roof
She brought the wrong clothes to Paris,
which wasn't as warm as imagination.
She borrowed a sweater and a coat
from me; also shoes, and the heavy socks
that made them fit. My sweater, especially,
seemed to enjoy having her wear it
at cafés, brasseries, and markets. I
explained all this to Balzac’s ghost
at his residence on Rue Raynouard.
Even though I wasn’t speaking French,
he understood immediately. I went on
to observe that almost everyone almost
everywhere works hard and life slips
past so quickly and then all of a sudden
you’re a ghost listening to a tourist.
Yes, yes, said Balzac’s ghost, but
reunion—
Summer fans spinning
conversations
the fortune at least
marks my place
embers melt down
old moments
tie themselves on
to the present
wine is poured
only for me
it doesn’t matter
we chose this form
the paintings of me
you promised
and the songs for you
that never came
don't matter
a year or 60
is over
old moments
in the heart a deep
well laughter
ecstacy
sometimes lovers tap it
then kick each other out
with tales of unwashed spoons
or feet or
too-familiar flesh
but it is they
theirs forever we
in our still
presentness
your image fades behind
new furniture and talk
but I'd know you even
without words or eyes
lust-dreams coloured
of someone forgotten
then I seek him following
heartpaths he left
in the dream
in and out of rooms
without walls he's near,
invisible shines from
his absence
words and gestures
peeled away
our eyes knew
made notes informed our
blood carved
this dream
Wild turkeys walk
past the memory of snow,
this spring’s first bird.
Early on summer days
I'd wake to my Dad's wedding band
clicking on the ivory keys.
His hymns would nudge me awake off the living room couch;
my camp site when AC was a luxury we still ignored as a family.
There was often no sheet music, no scrawled chord progressions guiding him,
just his hands knowing; finding the keys that agreed without looking.
At the time, it might as well have been
an alarm clock prelude to my chores, the signal that a break
from school could still be spoiled slapping paint on the peeling
exterior of our house as some lesson of work.
But now, I'd speak of this less harsh bugle call fondly.
I'd construct it into conversation so it appeared that