The Road Back

The Road Back

Trashing out
my abandoned rental house,
I managed to salvage
a record
of Gershwin hit songs.

One in particular
effected me.
I would have liked to share
the lyrics to the song,
but decided against it;
for I am afraid
of lawyers,
and besides Ira
was a much better writer
than I.

It is a song
about loneliness
and fear of abandonment;
the singer asks
to be remembered,
even though separated
by both physical and emotional
distance.

Memory has an odd effect
on old people
like me.
When I heard this song,
I think about,
I remember
the hundreds of people
I have known,
and many more who I
would have liked
to have known.

Some are gone.
My family,
for instance,
except for my sister,
her loveable husband,
and her two sons,
are all gone;
Mother, father,
stepfathers,
grandparents,
cousins,
old pals,
old loves,
all gone.

Friends and relatives,
I can remember
lots of them;
they seem to come
and go—
some stay longer
and some never get to be
known at all.
Al Kistenmacher,
where are you?

Some,
hell, there must be
millions of them,
are just latent,
theoretical friends—
strangers I have not met
yet.
But that is not memory—
it’s just speculation, rumination,
flights of fancy.

But I guess
that old song was about
a specific kind
of loneliness,
a romantic desire,
for human contact, yet
without the awkwardness, discomfort,
or commitment
of the face to face;
a kind of unfulfillable
yearning.

I must say,
at least for me,
face time,
even with its dangers,
is still where
real rewards
lie.
Still, it can be
reassuring
to think of someone
off in the distance
somewhere,
remembering me,
as I remember that
someone, or
those some ones;
you know,
all the cats
I’ve known before.

So it finally
comes down to you—
Gershwin and Palmer;
contrast and compare
as I stray off,
muttering gently,
“Do remember me.”

Douglas Palmer 2007