Gerald R. Ford International
*2/17/2019
*
Shadow waxes over the flight
Of garbage bins by concourse B, bare trees
whose February branches stir still
in the cured and yellow light.
Last night in the beam and mote
Of the carousel, its whirring motor,
The dusty odor of the slide
Projector, the anecdotes,
Bowl cuts, rabbit teeth, parquet
Color of childhood notebooks - and then
My sisters climbed in their cars in the snow
And drove away.
Three generations. That’s all you get.
Maybe one more
diapered and buckled to machines.
That’s it.
Or maybe it’s luckier to be
My grandfather, who died
Before my kids were born,
Leaving only the memory
Of his flannel shirts, the pitch of his lawn,
How his breath smelled, the song
He sang when he buttoned your coat
In spring, the joke -
(How do German children tie their shoes?
In little Nazis.)
IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING: In late 2019 I started putting together a series of dated poems and paintings pulled from journals, emails, text exchanges and phone snapshots as a kind of poetic scrapbook for the fam, or for our future selves. More about that here if you're curious. This poem is from that series.