I am lost
Suddenly I am lost
in a landscape
I once knew
like the back
of my hand.
See,
there, at the base
of my baby finger
is Sam's corner store.
I went there once
when I was out of favour
with my parents.
Sam gave me
a pink bubble-gum,
and his handkerchief
for the tears I was trying hard
to hold back.
And there,
by the next finger,
the one destined to become
a ring finger,
were the street-car tracks
which wound down to the barn
where street-cars spent the night.
I thought, perhaps, the drivers
stayed, too.
Most people stayed home at night,
safe from the dark.
Girls had been taught
the rules about darkness.
And there,
by the big knuckle
of my thumb,
was the house where they gave
candied apples on Hallowe'en,
back before we learned
not to accept candy
from strangers
I can't remember
what was by the first
and second fingers,
perhaps one was the street
where I was chased by bats
and fell into a hole excavated
for a new house,
and one may have been
the street to the trainyards,
where a woman, with a
too-curious husband,
sewed dresses for girls.
The street-car tracks are gone too,
ripped out to upgrade
from electric to fossil fuel.
I remember my disappointment
when the buses didn't sway
the way the street-cars did.
I loved it when the conductor saw
a straight stretch of track,
opened the throttle
as far as it would go,
and I had to hold on to the bar
of the seat in front of me
to keep from falling
to the floor.
Some of the grown-ups complained
that it was unsafe.
I remember, too, the sign
displayed on the wall
at the front of each street-car:
"No expectorating in this carriage."
I looked up the word when I got home.
Sam, of course, is long dead,
and his store long gone.
He said I could keep his handkerchief -
and I did -
kept it folded in a dresser drawer
until one day it was gone:
I don't remember when,
but, by then, I had grown
a stiff upper lip
and it wasn't needed
much.
Now, it's harder to remember
the once familiar landscape.
On the back of my hand
blue veins run
every which-way
and I lose myself
among the ridges
and deepening valleys
of imperfect recall,
and I ask myself
what are these fragments
of long past life,
what are these rag-tag
collections of memory
begging to be examined anew,
what is it that will not leave me
in peace?
