g r a v e l

red-eye

 

I.

 

it’s so dark

on both sides

I can’t see my reflection

and anyway

I don’t want to.

 

there’s—

some calm, some—

satisfaction, no,

some peace and quiet,

 

finally,

 

in sitting

in an airplane

on the way to see

my dying grandmother.

 

II.

 

that’s the glory of a poem, right?  that you can lie

all you want.  but in poems and in

life, I always, immediately turn back,

to say,

 

I’m not on a plane.

I’m in my bedroom

in my bed

because I can’t afford it

(oh come on,

who can’t afford

 

goodbye?)

 

III.

 

a proper goodbye.

who wants a proper goodbye?

that’s how they put it.

 

our goodbye, at least,

what was maybe our goodbye,

consisted of a long hug

and saying we loved each other

which we don’t tend to do

in words.

 

I asked her about her travels

and listened to anything she wanted to tell me,

as she measured and spooned out slowly

 

what she didn’t want to forget

to send off before—

 

sunset, sundown

driving into it

 

on the way not home.

 

III.  

 

I stumbled into the corner—

couldn’t take it—

and then my father,

her son, middle child, like me,

stumbled from the other edge

of another room—

 

I crumpled into him.

I’ve never seen his face

 

so soft and childlike.  

 

IV.

 

I keep trying to wear

the Tiger’s Eye ring she bequeathed to me

 

(from Granddad in Air Force Lieutenant Colonel days

from Southeast Asia),

 

I keep trying to wear

the golden ring with a line of five small square diamonds,

the center one a ruby,

black in the darkness, (I can’t count how many generations-old),

 

but then I slide them off

 

and it feels like

 

I’m developing early-onset osteo-

arthritis in my hands.