(You know I had to write more about the trip. And it’s time for a poem, folks. Buckle up!)
Northbound
The road unfurled, twisted, turned, became arrow-straight. The bleached concrete sang ballads of adventure under wearing tires.
The mountains marched along over my left shoulder, exits and signs for streets with funny names and the bracing roar of trucks rumbling by the rest stop made me smile as I saddled back up and hit the gas. Northbound.
Great great grandfather walked the same distance back in the old country after losing the Crimean war, and the best twenty years of his life. Twenty years. He was as good as dead when the knock came on his mother's door. The army got him. Twenty years away from home and then a thousand miles on foot. Honey, I'm home.
It was time for me to return home, too, and learn about the ancient deeds and how he built a new life, and Auntie so and so.
The Interstate swooped low over the Susquehanna River at Harrisburg, waved at the rail yards, and shot up into the wild country. I hurtled by towering cliffs, not understanding the memories encased in limestone and ancient seabeds, but dimly aware of footprints and vanished species and plants turning towards diamonds. Then, along the ridges I flew, spring finally emerging from the rubble, and back down sweeping vistas.
More cities, the Hudson river in a mighty silence, posh soccer moms choking the Connecticut highways with their Audis, and then, just after dusk, a small green sign welcoming me to Wethersfield with a melancholy wave.
Do you remember wanting to visit the North Pole to see Santa? Thank God he doesn't answer our prayers exactly. If we saw it, if we stood in the storied halls, would they crystallize into something of this world, and become mortal like the rest of us?
I had been to my dad's childhood town before, but time had turned his stories into myths, set in a place always far away, and in the past.
My ordinary headlights collapsed the images into ordinary reality, and I didn't know what to think.
The Return
Oh, how nice to see Grandma. We caught up on life and family history, traced the roots back to the Old Country, looked at photos, laughed, and stayed up late. I'd always wanted to stay up late with the grownups...until I actually became one, and that's when “the news” is discussed, the intractable problems, and such things that keep one up out of sleeplessness, not fun.
But this was.
The next day, we talked more, watched the coronation of King Charles, shouted and sniped at the TV, had a beautiful lunch, and went to the cemetery to see how it all ended for the ancestors.
How ordinary they were, under neat stones in neat grass. I felt a heaviness, a continued ignorance in my mind. No ancient secret brought over on the boat in 1913, no wisdom from the thousand mile walk, besides the usual call to live well, and the implicit time to carry the torch forward.
Or was there something else?
I'm not sure, so I wrote another poem about it.
Tombstone Weight
I met my great grandfather the other day
Sent a broom
In lieu of handshakes
Sweeping the mud and grass away
To see that his grave is kept clean
His hair went gray as his headstone
When he was my age
And he never ever
Visited his mother again
“Didn't want her to see me old.”
And the boat to Lithuania is slow.
The question galloped up
From where the Smelsgiskis lie silent for once
And the Cacatories don't worry about it (ever)
It beat me with incessant blows around my polite ears
Why why why why?
My grandma is impervious by now
Asphalt in a rainstorm of tears
Pointing to an empty patch
of ground
“That's where I'll be”
They said the Lord's Prayer over his grave
like
a bar band covers Skynyrd
I tried to mumble along
But got lost, and the words snagged
While the sun never let up for an instant
Casting shadows in those granite letters
Harsh.
When I didn't have any gray in my hair
I'd get so angry at the indifference of the world
and the system
And
The silence of God
As the weight of perceived futility crushed me
a smothering blubbery bland howling emptiness
of
What's the point of anything? Just look at the man in the ground.
So I would have my youthful revenge
and creep into the crawlspace of the world
to kick at forgotten cinderblocks in the foundation
With a scoff
Because nothing matters
Obviously
and there will be Hell to pay for my
mild dissatisfaction
“Only unique to me.”
But what if something does matter, like we all act it does, and I'm too stupid to see?
The New York Times told the Brits they didn't care about Charles being king
but they stood in the rain anyway
Jubilant
Who cares if you can say the right thing
If you're already living it
One doesn't have to put a finger on it
If your feet are already there
The cinderblocks that hold up the world aren't always
in the textbooks and fashionable magazines
Neat and tidy
Like a fable
(And even those are above my pay grade)
What am I gonna do, burn down calculus if I don't understand it, condemn it, belittle it, freeze it, be like a bee, pushing the drones out of the hive in winter, because they're done being useful?
Because I surely know how things ought to be.
The question waited for me in the mountain pass
After I said goodbye and hit the road to Scranton.
Why why why?
I don't know. But I'll let it sit there and simmer.
The sun sank low
spilling a vintage orange soda over the Hudson valley
and mountains purple
A star came out over the forgotten mines and hills and miles and miles of echoing distance
Do footprints on the sands of time
Grow golden, accruing interest as the years go by
Appearing ordinary bronze if we saw them fresh
Or does the Stirling of true hearts never tarnish
And shine through the limestone when all else is forgotten?
And I still don't know why.
But pop up anytime you like, ol' question, and stop by for a chat.
The kettle is always on.