Park Street

Park Street

For my Mother: almost mulls on now out the door with Vivaldi cassette tape and thermos, Someone has to pay the goddamned mortgage around here.

This is my mother on the way to her night job. And I’m 9.

For the poor.

For page 21 in that term paper way back community college 73’: Walking barefoot through the grove, baldcypress witchhazel hickory and moss leaned on the sun. One’s back is as warm as August gets.

I had forgotten the way red birds crumbled in my head, how I had scooped them from the floorboards and blown them town ward. How, 25 years later I become this adult, this haphazard beacon for my mother’s interaction.

August was a picture in my head; a door stoop I visited once in my youth, how the grove of beech creased from folded years. How birched and quite like a stone I sat atop the fire hydrant across the street; how high up I was then.

Parker street was like a welcome matt, Like we really look at We  l     co    me

For the fish market, Salmon Delta by the dog park at 5a.m. bustled like an honored dollar citron salmon, szechuan salmon cakes and not salmon traveling 1000 miles returning home to die where it hatched. Like it was against the current, like it felt freshwater and knew where it was when it was home.

And who wants to eat home?

We lost our cat. He had an orange tail. It wagged near the sliding glass, the kitchen smelling of warmth, glue guns and cinnamon potpourri. Tell Wells Fargo we had a bad week. Tell them that. But for now, don’t forget to take the trash to the curb. I'll be home at my usual.

My brothers and I created flyers in that August heat driven afternoon: Have You Seen this Face? We put the face on the fire hydrant, on the employee entrance of Venture’s, in the candy isle.

And while my brothers and I went on like craters falling apart, like rivers on fire, like that day we watched a man kiss a woman hard on the mouth, then let go. And I thought the world could end right there in Venture's parking lot.

For Alphabet soup.

I couldn’t tell Mother how to leave. She was going to sit there. Staring or not staring at the bird nest out the window. Listening or not listening to Fox News. I can count on her post-birth story of how she left town for good this time, how she checked into a Holiday Inn in Someplace, Utah until my father begged her to come home.

I can count her fingers here at 5a.m. where I tip toe down the hall and watch her sleep in the Lazy boy. Her fingers dangling off the arm rest, I’ve been meaning to tell you mother this is an alphabet. This life, you and I. But what does that mean when you’re 9?

August was a fine dresser drawer, packed twigs, a moonstone pendent, and Wolverine miniature.

And this is really about my love of a soup, nothing more. This is a soup-place-thing because we are all about soup and r and p   a r    k and so many letters that are not part of counting.

Lately, I’m getting older. Lately, it has been getting dark around 5pm. Lately, it has been too late to tell the boss off, to slam the garage door because it is cold outside and if you slam that door one more fucking time it will buckle and then what will you do? Hid the door under the sink, wait for May to come home to you?

And I love May. I can look out across winter and see it wake like a yawn. And its so-so breathe takes these August years in like asthmatic bronchitis like of way, like just-to-keep-your-knees-locked kind of way, like who-are-we-if-we-have-no-more-home kind of way.

How many shutters could I collect if I wanted to collect them, how many clocks could I hang or can cucumbers because it’s the dill smell isn’t it, the familiar home smell of family a place with a name and a letter.

For Park Street.