About a week or so before my seventh birthday, my family climbed into my grandma’s gold station wagon. We were headed out to the Fair Oaks Drive-In to see this new movie everyone was talking about. It had opened on May 25, 1977, but this was the first time my mom could take us all.
A squirrel steals a black walnut off Gram’s back porch.
I placed the half-full bucket of black walnuts on the ground and took a deep breath. For Gram, it’s not so hard to carry, but I’m still little and half-full is more than enough for me. I turned around and looked back toward her back yard, full of trees, scanning the surface to see if I had missed any black walnuts.
I got to thinking the other day and I concluded I have done a lot of stupid things in my life so far. I’m willing to try anything once. I do things without thinking of the consequences because it seems like a good idea at the time. I’m also dumb.
“He was a nice man. He didn’t deserve to go that way.” The words had a tinge of sadness attached to them as my mother said them matter-of-factly while we sat waiting for the light to turn green at the intersection of East Main Street and Irwin Avenue.
When the light changed, she gently pushed the gas pedal toward the floor and we continued on our way. It was 1986. Not many people understood HIV/AIDS. There were rumors, confusion, and plenty of hatred. My mother’s words were twinged with a sense of hopelessness. At the time, a diagnosis of HIV/AIDS was a death sentence. This man she knew in high school was already dead. There was nothing she could do.
A picture of a picture at Ellis Island and the inspiration for my May, 1991 poem.
This poem was published in the anthology “A Sea of Treasures” in 1995. It was the first thing I had written to be published.
Ellis Island
The beds lie in
Soldier rows
ten by five
Steel frames that are
more of a home
to roaches
Paint peels off
and rust
corrodes the springs
mattresses full
of lice
and
rats
burrowing in
The beds are pushed
against walls
where paint chips
fall
No sheet
no blanket
just a pillow
to rest a
weary head
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