A Table of Contents for the Future

1. South Hills Village
2. Dorchester
3. Bethel Village
4. Santa Barbara
5. Highland
6. Casswell
7. Washington Junction
8. Smith Road
9. St. Anne’s
10. Martin Villa
11. Overbrook Junction
12. Castle Shannon
13. Arlington
14. Poplar
15. Mt. Lebanon
16. Dormont Junction
17. Kelton
18. Potomac
19. Neeld
20. Shiras
21. Boustead
22. Belasco
23. Coast
24. Hampshire
25. Fallowfield
26. Westfield
27. Pennant
28. Traymore
29. Dawn
30. Palm Garden
31. South Hills Junction
32. Station Square
33. First Avenue
34. Steel Plaza
35. Wood Street
36. Gateway

Coming Home

Coming home,
the smallest things glimmer:
the rusty milk can full of hockey sticks,
the birchwood in the fireplace. Even
the grooves in the floorboards alight.
My steps here are measured, they fall
softer on these floors.

And then there are moments–
extraordinary moments–in which
my memories are shattered:
the Friday/Saturday doubleheader of pizza
ordered in, my mother laughing
unreservedly at the computer, at my sister’s
emails. These are notable.

These are the proof that there is progress,
that change is possible.

In dreams I have lifted the fabric of this life
and shaken a wave through it all. This house
is fragile, though, and waves more dangerous.

Still, I am not unmoving. I am doing
what I can. Mom is making
more salads now, and Dad,
Dad is smiling more than usual.

The Cool White of Shelves

Where so many years of art projects had cluttered white shelves, all was now empty.  The room at the top of the stairs–the door that was always closed–it was sterile, door swung open, floorboards staring straight up.  And then I was inside it all.  I was opening suitcases and backpacks and heaping piles of books on the cool white of the shelves.  A cool order was beginning to appear.  So many books; no things but books. 

The things she left in the room are haunting: a metal bird in a glass jar, a spherical weave of aluminum, a plaster cast of her face, broken off at the jaw.  They are things she will not remember.  It is hard to remember without seeing, and these things–her things–are the gifts that will greet her once she arrives home again, after a year of college.  After a year of forgetting. 

I am moved in, now.  I am a permanent resident, and for the first time in 12 or 13 years I have no roommate.  I beam at this thought.  I marvel at the space, the freedom of choice.  I sleep naked.  All things are good.  But, lying awake in bed each night, I silently lament the absence of another’s breath, the presence of another life, and sleep a cold, isolated sleep.

Now that the track is laid

Two off-peak trolleys brought me last night to the newly rented apartment of some friends new to town.  All the makings of moving in were strewn about the carpet: groceries, electronics, the unassembled pieces of a futon.  Theirs is the excitement of writing on a blank slate.  Okay, so the slate isn’t exactly blank.  Sure, the carpets still carry the scent of smoke, and who cares if the stairs to the third floor are crooked?  Every little thing in that house is a ridge or groove of skin cells.  Each little part is complicating the fingerprint further. 

The ridges and grooves of this area in the southern suburbs is the major complication for the trolley system here.  Or it must have been.  Now that the track is laid, I rarely think of it, except to marvel at the way a neighborhood is tucked away here, or dipping so low over there.  Really, I rarely think of anything besides these neighborhoods.  My own is too big to know intimately.  I settle for a wave from the crossing guard, a chat at the trolley booth.  We are different people going in dfferent directions.  Until the trolley reins us in.

Conditions

 

In the event that we

spend our time from here on out

growing farther and farther apart:

 

If, God forbid,

the burning light that I can see

is your passing comet, growing smaller:

 

If the dreams in which I see you

continue with that piercing, melancholy soundtrack

and if your legs keep carrying you away:

 

If, for some reason

the burden of building a life somewhere else

grows heavier than this love,

the love we share now:

 

If the scales are somehow tipped too far that way:

 

Forget everything of me.

Forget everything but this:

 

In my silence, inside of me,

a purple martin flapped wildly,

struggled madly to be seen.

 

 

A New Machine

We are swept throught the dark on massive pendula tonight.  So many gears meshing, so many unseen motions all masked by the simplicity of a tick, a tock.  Each tink, each jot of time speaks a word.  These are my seconds, minutes, hours–all offering to me their advice, all offering some supposedly helpful information.  Of late, my seconds are dropping hints, leaving clippings from the want ads scattered throughout my house–pressed between the pages of my books, folded between the few bills left in my wallet, under my favorite coffee mug.  Each passing tooth is an opportunity lost.  Each gear offers its circular reasoning, its cyclical advice.  We always end up at the same place.  I am never better nor worse for the wear. 

Sometimes, this late in the evening, I am driven to action.  There is a metallic clink, the squeak of a hinge, and then quietly–too quietly–it all stops.  The pendulum arrested, the escapement still and silent, the gear train dead in its tracks.  The hour and minute hands, normally so slow-moving, are visibly impeded.  A great machine has unraveled.  Still in perfect alignment, all potential and kinetic energies have disappeared, and the words stop too.  The words and sentences and paragraphs and speeches and tirades.  All is silent.  All is still.

I write.  Time does not exist.  Words do not exist.  Energy does not exist. 

At a late hour, when everyone is tucked into the assurances that they nightly make themselves, I am sitting.  Waiting. 

Here is the deepest secret that I know: Nothing exists this late but fingertips and lies.  I am doing my best to use both.

So when the pendulum stops swinging me through the night, I am dropped in a new place.  There is a silence here made stronger by the amount of noise that has disappeared.  In the silence I hammer out a new set of imperfect gears.  They will not always mesh, they will not run cleanly and endlessly.  The words I type counteract the clippings, the chidings.  A new machine is coming into focus.  It is a hideous mess of metal and math.  It has no purpose, no objectives, no place in this world save that is is my creation.  There is no reason in it, save that it exists. 

I’m trying to figure out how it may help me.  I want to know what breakthroughs are hidden in these gears.  What secrets lie hidden away in the springs?

These eyes don’t lie

Pittsburgh in August is a swell of heat and hazy dark.  Years away have done me good, but I am back with fresh eyes and a hunger.  I have grown and  I have changed, but I was wrong to assume that the city would sit quietly and wait for me to return.  A season of farming has slowed my pace and now, finally back, I am greeted by a tree in full flower.  So many branches of avenues are jetting off in as many different directions.  There are so many blossoms to admire, to spend time with. 

Despite it all, I know that something deeper runs through this place.  Deeper than even the three intersecting riverbeds is a voice that I haven’t heard in a while.  It it older than me, older than generations before me, and it startles, even frightens.  Still, it is something I don’t really understand.  I only hear it and know that something is here.  Something else is alive and communicating that life.  Something else wants to be known. 

I remember that in colder weather this voice would drift visibly into the sky, leaving our chimney, but lingering.  The smoke was serious and heavy, but still rising away.  Still disappearing.  I have heard it other places, too, but its presence here and now is only a nervous comfort–I still fear the voice for its age.  I still try to ignore it, which is easier in the summer when it cannot condense into an image.  “My ears have deceived me before,” I will say.  “These ears are playing tricks on me.”  But then it will be winter, and these eyes don’t lie. 

Let this all be dedicated to the unraveling mystery of the voice and the smoke.  Offer suggestions when you’ve got them.  Pass insight along.  Participate if you can.  Listen hard and squint–it’s near.