Boston on a Friday Night

Streets near Newbury
around eight on a Friday night
are black as rain,
filled with pretty doors
and New England brick
that stands quiet and straight
in modesty, charm.

Gingko trees linger
and wonder with us
beneath the scenes of lives
we will not live;

windows hide

amateur piano music
determined, passionate,
weak.
Wet hair is entrusted
to speckled braiding fingers,
knives and forks scrape plates
like the sound of the world
quickening, losing time.

We wait for whatever will be
again between us,
flawless,
like the beginning
of anything.

Shame fades in the wash
of clean, empty streets
in the embrace, promise
of hours to follow,
the blank paper night.

We stand together,
wait for the rain.



The Night Julia Was Born
my first memory

The shadow of my father?s long body
bent over me like an aged, dimmed spirit,
a crooked reflection of candle flame
against my bedroom wall,
flickered larger as the night grew on,
hid my eyes from the hallway light.

He patted my cheek in his tired way
and tucked looping strands
of dark hair behind my ear.
Perhaps he kissed my forehead
before he left.

His body took on a clearer form
in its retreat beyond my bedroom door:
heavy shoulders, growing shock
of silver strands, cumbrous posture
I did not understand.

He sank between two walls
painted white, dropped away
over the narrow staircase
like some heavy, awkward dream.
It disappeared after four stairs
leaving me with the awful hall light
and without my mother?s good night prayer.

Clutching the blankets
I told myself
it was time to be a big girl.
And at three years old,
I prayed for my father.

I sometimes wonder
what might have happened
If I had called to him,
arms outstretched and crying,
what would have been known
had he looked back.

Hours before,
my sister mourned
her own birth,
her own cries not yet
tempered by the pain
of shadowy figures.