Return

Going back,
Duluth’s dull skyline
draws out of view;
I follow other nomads,
trailing patterns but not
as the crow flies-
roads loom up, rushes of recollect
pocked and scarred as the blacktop.

Remember in seventy-three
how we came this way,
racing a phone call, retreads flapping
on your piece-of-shit Nova;
Sissy picked us up
at that one-pump station
broke-down and busted a day short
of Birmingham and remember
how she cried when she saw us-
then drove every mile back,
mute as the familiar ghosts slapping
our staring faces through the windshield.

Can you see us,
standing scrubbed and shiny-necked,
pulling at our clip-on ties
beneath the arc of an elm;
that one whose trunk sissy painted white
the year the termites swarmed-

remember how we spent whole days
scraping dirt hard-packed around its roots,
squatting until our knees grew numb,
digging holes to China
we would never finish
but somebody did-

dug a cavity
while we were forgetting;
scooped petrified earth without
bending the spoon and remember
how ma rocked on the crumbling edge,
wearing that navy dress,
the one we would bury her in
on a bright Sunday afternoon
can you hear her screams-
swooping and diving, tangling
at last in the branches
like blind birds.

Remember that morning
how you stayed and I left,
because you said the road had come
too far back and China had gotten too close-
so miles became time
minutes patterned into days into years
waiting, listening for the ring
listen; can you remember,
did you know then
what I couldn't forget-

that I would always answer,
that I would always be the one
coming back.