THOUSAND MILE WEEKEND

by ROBERT LIETZ

THOUSAND MILE WEEKEND: REUNION

CLASS OF '63, ASSUMPTION ACADEMY

The poem, in 3 parts, mingles images en route

to and from with images of the actual reunion

and memories from our collective past, hoping to

convey both the exhilaration and confusion of

that exhausting but reaffirming weekend.

1

Time's slow flame turns a Pontiac to scrap.

Couples like galaxies take form,

performing, under ceiling stars, turns of selves

returned, like just-visible whispers.

Nun-prodded senior girls lead the freshman boys

to hardwood. And here, in shimmering

grey, in cloudbank, the Cathedral of Our Lady,

the slow-going, half-sung Mass

for our intentions. And here, below the cameos

of archangels and prophets,

below the altar-ceiling Paradise, I introduce myself,

enter his puzzlement to speak

the name of a dead neighbor. So the decimals tick.

And the road-house colas, sharpening

the hues of shoulder-weed and lupine, muff

of night-killed doe, the coral of lives

in place, preserved, in addition's reservoir. I hear

the decimals tick, the creak at hub,

and this one's 80th year confusion, the frowning

Sisters substituting footstomping

for twists. And now this white-shark Pontiac,

hung center-up on the church-lot steps

above Salina, Cavanaugh's radio alive,

and now the darkness brightening

with these Temptations

and Supremes!

2

Kurtz shinnies to, graces across

the top swing bars,

the pendulum swings wind-stirred under him,

taunts rising like terrible stars.

Fall happens on New York. Reds,

yellows rainbowing.

A pillor of smoke climbs elm-ladders

from an undiscovered source.

1960, '61. Patient, poor enough,

we waited weeks to buy our records

worn to hisses off the jukebox,

growled into ballfields and school lots,

the skeleton keys picked up from gutters

jangling night-scores at our sides.

Clothespinned jacks and aces declared

our anthems to the World.

We climbed that treed hill to the dusk-lit

cross up top. And there, among

the last-century's dead, we watched

the sun turn marvelous,

dropping away in chemical waters

at our West.

Those streetlamp-haloed diagrams

in chestnut fall

repeat their claims on me, the looks of kin

surprised, the talk of war

fired up with talk of wars called back.

Vivaldi plays like difficult espousals.

Nobody from our class dead. Between

waxed butch-cuts

and the cutting edge of draftboards, boys,

promoted toward careers, we hang

ankle-locked from oak limbs, whole trees

creaking under us, laugh off

the Christwatch cautions of the Sisters,

Kurtz measuring our grace,

and the reflecting water under us, the blue pool

below the blue hem of Our Lady,

the grotto whisper-lit, and women,

kneeling in the shade and light

of votive candles, rumors of war

accompanying their fingers

through meant prayers.

3

Then the low-lined, flame Celica shoots through,

fuzz-buster trained on space, leaving

the Celebrity behind, turning the grandmothers' blue coifs

in the Crown Victoria ahead.

The figure I was, ( the bravado and avowals

darkening the annual's bright flood, )

crosses below me on the mud flat, a shape glittering

in Time's folds, quickened by priests' spiels.

Tonight, the several languages in us, the Dresdens,

Calabrias and Corks of our pieced blocks

brighten the specked hardboard, the complimentaries lit,

brightening her eyes of widowhood and healing.

I watch the underloaded trucks run 70 ahead, ( rainbowing

exhaust, slowing for drivers squeezing

the last inches from closed lanes, ) pull over out of rain,

and I imagine engines snuffling through sleep breaks,

driving West again, toward Mozart, toward the chianti

I held back, my daughter's first cornbread, the turnips

and acorn squash out of our garden. And we, like protean

saints and lives on scapulars,

lives like cadenzas we've penned in, we dance

in swirling light, awkward, charmed enough,

affirmed within our choices and our next careers,

our fall-chilled dancing proof enough, try,

and trying as we might, not the least

even spoiled this lifetime's blood

de-railing grace.

For John Hoppe, Louise Braunmiller, and Judy Sweeney

ABOUT ROBERT LIETZ