No One Remembers

A soft wind
off the stones of the dead.
I pass by, stop the car,
and walk among none
of my own, to say
something useless
for them, something
that will calm me under
the same old beaten sky,
something to let me
go on with this day
that began so badly
alone in a motel 10 miles
from where I was born.

I say Goodbye finally
because nothing else is here,
because it is Goodbye,
Uncle Joe, big cigar, fist
on the ear, nodding sure
bitch and coming at me.
You can't touch me now,
and she's a thousand miles
from here, hell, she may be
dancing long past dawn
across the river
from Philly. It's morning
there too, even in Philly,
it's morning on Lake St. Clair
where we never went fishing,
along the Ohio River, the Detroit,
morning breaking on
the New York Central Express
crashing through the tunnel
and the last gasp of steam
before the entrance into hell
or Baltimore, but it's not
morning where you are, Joe,
unless you come with me.

I'm going to see her today.
She'll cry like always
when you raised your voice
or your fist, she'll
be robed near the window
of the ward when I come in.
No, she won't be dancing.
It's my hand she'll take
in hers and spread on her lap,
it's me she'll feel
slowly finger by finger
like so many threads back
to where the blood died
and our lives met
and went wrong, back
to all she said she'd be,
woman, promise, sigh,
dark hair in the mirror
of a car window all night
on the way back from Georgia.

You think because I
was a boy, I didn't hear,
you think because you had
a pocketful of loose change,
your feet on the desk,
your own phone, a yellow car
on credit, I didn't see
you open your hands
like a prayer and die
into them the way a child
dies into a razor, black hair,
into a tire iron, a chain.
You think I didn't smell
the sweat that rose
from your bed, didn't
know you on the stairs
in the dark, grunting
into a frightened girl.
Because you could push me
aside like a kitchen chair
and hit where you wanted,
you think I was a wren,
a mourning dove
surrendering the nest.

The earth is asleep, Joe,
it's rock, steel, ice,
the earth doesn't care
or forgive. No one remembers
your eyes before they tired,
the way you fought weeping.
No one remembers how much
it cost to drive all night
to Chicago, how much
to sleep all night in a car,
to have it all except
the money. No one remembers
your hand, opened, warm
and sweating on the back
of my neck when you first
picked me up and said
my name, Philip, and held
the winter sun up for me to see outside
the French windows of
the old house on Pingree,
no one remembers.