My Trip East
began badly, ended better.
Leaving Seattle -
painfully early start,
palpitating heart,
late, not quite too late.
Ouf! settling in our seats,
she of course by the window,
I with, at my elbow,
shoulder, thigh and calf,
a big man pressing flesh
flat five long hours...
Here’s Boston and relief;
to genteel Cambridge,
our high hotel room.
Walking out round
Harvard Square, here’s
the Coop Bookshop,
still sublime. Fancy,
on one’s doorstep!
If only books weighed less -
note their names for later on.
Sleep now and sleep in:
Friday she can drowse,
I tour bookshops and browse.
Groliers - still all poetry!
quiet, faithful, orderly -
I could spend a fortune
here; chatting quietly,
the assistant so informed
(elderly, naturally).
I tell her: in another age
in the other Cambridge,
John Ashbery read at King’s,
supported by Bill Manhire,
who outshone him.
This I'd seen and heard -
oh both good, the Kiwi
merely better-tuned.
Fame is Manhattan, maybe.
Manhire is Wellingtoned.
I exit empty-handed,
even deferring buying
Kiwis - much-travelling,
some read, mostly unread,
down under and unheard.
2
While the wife earnestly
conference-goes at Lesley,
I’m free to meet my friend
the professor. In Divinity’s
old building, see,
this lecture room so tiny,
where Emerson told
young America to be
American. Michael and I
transfer it to our Auckland
fifty years back when
such calls, needed and heeded,
woke us to the local, then
the regional, the native,
the new place so ‘other’
than the Old Country
(which we hadn’t seen);
the need for roots,
new shoots, for fruits
distinctive. Well, has it
happened? or are we
still near the British coast?
like Shetland, with more sheep?
or rocky Cornwall at most?
Underpopulated,
tethered, provincial?
From our old shared homeland
he shows me new books.
When I read them, they’ll
settle some doubts.
3
I have a deferred date
in Quincy Street:
three museums of art
in one, made greater
by new architecture.
Artworks from all times
and places seem at home.
Expatriation, yes,
but caring curators bless
the works for our caress.
4
Her weekend conference done,
it’s time to fly to Brooklyn,
to see if here’s the place she needs.
If all your life you’ve never felt
your home was home,
dreams draw you on.
Next day in our rented room
she sleeps; I walk Park Slope
up gentrifying avenues
to Prospect Park, her hope
in my pocket. Yes, she might
try life here and feel it’s right.
Here’s where we’d shop,
walk the dogs, go to plays,
slip to Manhattan by subway.
Next day she says we’ve seats
for a great new show on Broadway.
Let’s go in time to walk
Manhattan’s High Line Park!
We do, and here she spies
on either side, as we stroll
with all the rapt strollers
through gardens of delight,
apartments for lease - each right
for making her home,
her first true home. Chelsea?
yes, please, the thrills of Town,
the quiet of the High Line,
prospects of the Hudson,
walking dogs easily.
5
We fly out towards Seattle
next night, while Jet Blue’s fly-hi
brings her laptop the best
properties for lease in Chelsea.
She’s singing to herself
some song by Joni Mitchell
she always knew carried
for her some promise of home.
Myself, I carry in my satchel
the poet* saying ‘no home like place.’
The home he left when I did,
shares our hearts with some
very ‘other’ places, good for a time.
East West - home’s best?
North South - anywhere there’s rest.
[for my wife Marilyn Black
and my old friend *Michael D Jackson]
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