“Notice how everyone has just arrived here
from a journey.” Rumi
A Seattle snowfall is rare and
after two days of it
I bundle to walk around Kinnear and
up to Galer.
We wandered these hills enough,
those mid-70s summers,
stoned and mute, and even then,
when we had all the energy of youth
we had to stop to breathe at each
block’s crest.
I can hear it all the way to here,
our labored breathing,
the branches scratching wind and sparrows
chirp-chipping.
I never felt more connected to another—to
life.
It was in your house only, where I
found succor.
It is not memory; it is my body
that knows
all the zig-zags up this hill, the climb
with the least stair steps
or the most, and today the hike that
minimizes my aging
and these layers of down and wool.
By the time I hike to your old
house on Seventh,
I need to shake snow off my sleeves.
Like white, paper ash, I unbury
myself from a flurry
of apprehension that seems to
always travel with me.
I am so determined to walk past
your house,
a frequent tourist, I return to this
attraction year after year
as though it defines the whole
experience of “Seattle”.
Instead of recalibrating my trek I
trudge in front of the man
who set up a tripod to photograph the
sound and the snow.
There are people everywhere
snapping photos,
that is how beautiful it is where
you used to live.
The hedge your mother planted has
grown
into an impenetrable nine-foot wall.
I need an overlook,
because today none of this feels
familiar.
The tennis court lot was sold,
crowded now
with another four-story, three bath.
And what’s with the grid iron fence
closing off
the yawning garden and stone path,
and out back
that bamboo hinting at modernity
and an Asian aesthetic?
I have finally arrived, Glenda, at
the moment I know
with dead certainty I will never
fulfill my naive promise
to buy this house for us. I will never
inhabit
your mother’s room with its
spectacular view
of storms lighting up the sound, of
the grain elevator,
all those ships creeping out to
feed people at all the ports
around the world. Never again the
luxury to have you for myself,
to dance to Radar Love in your room that faces
the stairwell up Lee. John and Mark
used to sit midpoint,
smoke, and wait for you to show.
And who could fault them? I am a
ghost,
hovering there with them, longing for
a glimpse
of you in all your fifteen-year-old
perfection,
for a few moments feeling like
everything would turn out
all-right. But it didn’t.
Glenda, I think I’m afraid. Nothing is about aspiration
anymore, it’s about time left, about
too much regret.
Why can’t I let any of it go? I
can’t sort out
the all-right from what has gone
wrong. Like this blizzard
I can’t clearly see through and by
the time I reach Galer I am sobbing.
I can’t look up; the flakes fall
into my eyes like small fairy scissors
cutting, cutting, cutting away.
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