Alan Botsford – Ⅳ
‘Save Your Nickel’
On the phone, our last exchange of words,
I in Kamakura, he in Phoenix, the words
out of his mouth pouring into my ears
from the line’s other end as he struggled to breathe.
Hold on, hold on, I thought, and said, I’m coming,
To see you, I’ll be there soon. My voice shook
the dust from the walls that separated us, years
wondering, Who is he? while wandering the earth
in search of the road I was already on. Look,
my wife told me, waste not another moment here.
So I departed, flung into orbit, classes on hold back
where I worked the clay of younger minds to help shape
their notions of who they were to themselves, no hope
of formalizing what I would see held out as sickle
by one come to reap all we had together sown
over the course of the journey, I bedside-bound
but late on arriving, the sister at the airport grown
unfamiliar in the distance eyed, squinting in disbelief,
the small-prop plane’s engine drowning out my tears
on the local flight to where he’d be laid like a stone,
cold to the lips, and even harder to fathom. Too late but not too
soon to hear the sound of his voice that clears
a path to forgiveness he asked from me, last son who,
having come all this way, yet not far enough
to know better, would now hold up his words in the light
of one lifetime or more later, rising like a name
out of the fires where he lay, and lays, the sight
of him, sound of him, touch of him
closer to home that he’d made and would leave
to me to make sense of, saying, Save your nickle,
before, after holding on for so long, he had to go
the way I one day would have to follow, to know
what out of the ashes comes to life, the earned
remains of loss and grieving worn like a coat
of many colors brought back as from a dream, or a note
written in the margins of a gift once given, now claimed,
the naming music we shared being this new sphere
I travel in, famed for its dross transformed, its fears burned
away, at last, to reveal not what is saved, only what’s worth
saving.
On the phone, our last exchange of words,
I in Kamakura, he in Phoenix, the words
out of his mouth pouring into my ears
from the line’s other end as he struggled to breathe.
Hold on, hold on, I thought, and said, I’m coming,
To see you, I’ll be there soon. My voice shook
the dust from the walls that separated us, years
wondering, Who is he? while wandering the earth
in search of the road I was already on. Look,
my wife told me, waste not another moment here.
So I departed, flung into orbit, classes on hold back
where I worked the clay of younger minds to help shape
their notions of who they were to themselves, no hope
of formalizing what I would see held out as sickle
by one come to reap all we had together sown
over the course of the journey, I bedside-bound
but late on arriving, the sister at the airport grown
unfamiliar in the distance eyed, squinting in disbelief,
the small-prop plane’s engine drowning out my tears
on the local flight to where he’d be laid like a stone,
cold to the lips, and even harder to fathom. Too late but not too
soon to hear the sound of his voice that clears
a path to forgiveness he asked from me, last son who,
having come all this way, yet not far enough
to know better, would now hold up his words in the light
of one lifetime or more later, rising like a name
out of the fires where he lay, and lays, the sight
of him, sound of him, touch of him
closer to home that he’d made and would leave
to me to make sense of, saying, Save your nickle,
before, after holding on for so long, he had to go
the way I one day would have to follow, to know
what out of the ashes comes to life, the earned
remains of loss and grieving worn like a coat
of many colors brought back as from a dream, or a note
written in the margins of a gift once given, now claimed,
the naming music we shared being this new sphere
I travel in, famed for its dross transformed, its fears burned
away, at last, to reveal not what is saved, only what’s worth
saving.
