Origin Stories: letting pickle juice run down my chin

photo by Andreas M on Unsplash

Here is the Williamsburg Bridge, which spans the East River between Brooklyn and Manhattan. Below there is a poem I wrote 8 years ago that this photo illustrates.

This photo shows where my parents first held hands. 70 and some years later both have died. By now they have not been married to each other for a very long time, its not their romance I am showing here, it is my own origin. Somewhere along the walkway between Manhattan and Brooklyn, after a night school class at City College, the spark that made me was kindled. Whether or not it was all a good idea, or in each of their best interest, or ??? who knows now. But something started in the curious passage over the river that about ten years later manifested as me.

I think of these things in the wake of my mother's death ~ the beginning of my orphanhood. Here I am in the brave new world of being, differently. Among all the things my mother was, and was not, to me/for me... there was a constancy of being connected that I now have to learn to live without. Its not like its an emergency, after all I saw it coming and had time to prepare myself. And it happens to every one. Sooner or eventually, being motherless is a universal experience for most earthlings. The news of her death, though, this takes time to metabolize. Cell by cell to my marrow and back again. And, I know from grieving my dad, it will come across my bow now and then like a rogue wave, until my own last breath.

Meanwhile, I am having a rough patch with being disabled. Some due to progressive degeneration beyond my control, some due to a situation I knew I should have been managing better. Some due to how broken health care in America is at the moment. As much as I long to, I can't go stroll across the Williamsburg Bridge in the moonlight. Besides, the waist high wooden barrels I remember so distinctly in the pickle shop on the corner have, by now, been replaced by some hipster iteration of old neighborhood flavors in a fancy jar. I can not walk a city block let alone cross a bridge. And maybe I am better off for the time being remembering what once was instead of making the effort of a long drive to see what it has all become.

Lately, I guess because the past has been so present in my mind, I am not a fan of the current era. Sometimes as the day begins I lay in bed trying to remember when I am. There is such disarray in my time stream and so many doors open in the memory palace all at once. I have to wait out the vertigo before I can get up to pee.

Photo by sanjiv nayak on Unsplash

Here is the poem I mentioned at the top. Below is a note about it's prompt.

Madre Muerte

at fifty six and eighty eight

my mother and I don't

talk about death much

but death sits

like a wise old crow

on a branch

looking in

the other day when I asked

how she and her partner

are managing his

dementia this week

we laughed over her lie

'situation normal'

a farcical move along

folks there's nothing

to see here

she waved me off

then offered

chicken soup

for my pneumonia

even though she'd have

to spend four hours

in the car to bring it

I hung up the phone

full of sorrow

suddenly understanding

that when my mother dies

I will travel to

New York City to let fly

the ash of my grieving

from the Williamsburg Bridge

leaning into the wind withmy feet trusting the same

iron beams where my father

walked her home from

Manhattan to Brooklyn

whistling Bach and

holding hands

no other edifice

would hold me in

suspension above

all the converging

time streams

singing to my DNA

keeping me tethered

to the earth

no other span between

here and now would

provide the physics

in which I might

continue to exist

when my mother dies I'll

go and eat half sour

pickles from the right place

in Williamsburg where the fathers

of the old men tending the

barrels are the sons of

children she played with

I'll drink brine straight

from the container

stand in the shade

letting pickle juice

run down my chin while

the wise old crow mingles

with pigeons on the sidewalk

reminding me

even when my mother dies

there are still places I'll belong

among the living

-----------------

To celebrate the bicentennial of Walt Whitman’s birth on May 31, 2019, Brooklyn Poets sent a call for submissions to their Whitman Bicentennial Poetry Contest. Here is the prompt, in response to the bard’s indelible question from “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”: “What is it then between us?” I was delighted that this poem was selected as a contest finalist.