Upstairs an ethnic voice intones
About women named Eleanor and Lucy;
This is the only noise that breaks the silence.
Downstairs, I’m reading a poem
About young girls who travel the map
While reassuring themselves
That they have a place
With all the staples of a childhood home.

Can’t qualify without:
A Little League Field with patches
Worn by clumsy cleats,
A local diner with crusty waiters,
And schools that have teenagers
Singing about the loveliness of dames.

This town I’m in now has all these
In some variation.
Like a Border’s Books near a mall
But not the one I used to play thin versions
Of old pop songs for the local PTA.

Then again, that Border’s is long gone.
I can visualize the inside:
Hollowed concrete where there was once
Bad coffee and unshaven readers.
There is trace evidence of this.
I promise.

I particularly like section 5:
It evokes Paris and Vienna
Within the confines of corn
And low-lying cement.
Perhaps Paris owns the road that
These girls blazed down.

Paris, Texas?
Verona, Virginia?
How about Geneva, New York
Where Dr. Dick Diver
Took his fatal plunge?

This house reminds me of my godmother’s
Though not in the childhood visits way.
More like the later years
After the cancer stole her rage
And memories of stoops and stickball
Dominated all the happier thoughts.

I wonder, can one feel nostalgia
For a time before one’s born?
The way she re-collected her thoughts—
You’d think the remembered world
Was Elysium with Temptations music.

I’m sure if I searched my memory,
I’d find a point of such idyll
Before people used language to build walls
With camouflaged doors.
Somewhere the rainy Saturdays
Had to become bliss.

I had them, I’m telling you.
Home is where you remember it.

08/06/2006

Author's Note: The poem I'm referencing is Lisel Mueller's "Highway Poems," specifically section 5. It's in her anthology Alive Together. I've also taken JD's suggestion and replaced the parentheses with italics. I think it works better this way.

Posted on 06/22/2007
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