Wheels

Wheels

Packing all she had in the van that carried her to

Softball games, massive coon cat riding on her lap,

Interstate and turnpike onto the Verrazano flying

Into Brooklyn pinned against roller coaster BQE,

Glancing in apartment windows and sideways into

Queens before the carney man let us out in Astoria.

It seemed like a nice neighborhood, so Greek with

Traces of Robert Moses in the park along the river,

And my daughter seemed so grown up, moving in

With a high school friend, by two I had unloaded

Her whole life into the arms of the city I was afraid

To inhabit myself, and with a single hug I was gone.

Left for the other appointment that day, generations

Changing places on wheels unseen, at four I was in

New Jersey with my stepbrother wheeling our parents’

Last things down the UHaul ramp, old secretary desk

That should have been my mother’s, those grievances

Let go of somewhere between Connecticut and God.

Assisted living they called it, not warehousing of the

Overstayed, dining hall tasteful if not tasty, my father

Gracious in his dry humor, nineteen months later he

Was dead, rolled out in a bag the day after I received

The blessing of holding him like a baby, unconscious

Lips rooting like those of a child lost in another city.